Writer and Director: Paul Bettany
Starring: Jennifer Connolly, Anthony Mackie, Rob Morgan, Amy Hargreaves, and Bruce Altman
Academy Award Winner Jennifer Connelly and Anthony Mackie (The Avengers) star in a riveting story of survival. Two strangers will find each other and rise above their struggle to get off of the streets of New York City.
Shelter stars Anthony Mackie as Tahir and Jenniffer Connolly as Hannah in a fascinating look in the lives of two people who fall in love. Now, it breaks the conventional followings in that these two place folks who are, in fact, homeless when they fall in love. Did I mention that Jennifer Connelly plays a homeless heroin addict? Requiem for a Dream fans gotta love the icing on the cake.
Now your mind will undoubtedly be filled with images of filth on filth love making but let me tell you that this isn’t that kind of movie. This movie is very respectful of its audience and how it presents the predicament. This movie is primarily a pair of interesting character studies intertwined into a movie. Hannah has some fucked up shit going on in her life that she’s not trying to deal with and rather than return to her somewhat well off life with her not-so-destitute family. She chooses to live on the streets running from her problems but Tahir is an immigrant from Africa who’s done some truly heinous things in his past and came to America to start over. You know, the American Dream. The problem being that he didn’t make it. He’s got a good heart just hasn’t had any success in life and winds up wandering New York and homeless.
The movie is the directorial debut of Paul Bettany, popularly known as The Vision, and you can tell that this is a rookie movie. The movie tries a little too hard at times to get an emotional response, moves a bit too slowly, and doesn’t have enough balance with regard to lighthearted moments to keep you entertained from beginning to end. Some movies can be sad from beginning to end and work but this movie tries to interject some humor or sentiment into scenes but doesn’t accomplish that. Those scenes seem more annoying than anything while watching and you can’t help but want the scene to move along already.
Jennifer Connelly leads this movie with Anthony Mackie trying to keep up. Mackie is pretty talented in his own right but with him trying to adopt an accent in his performance seems a little shaky at times. He’s serviceable but he’s left in the dust when compared to Connelly who is outstanding and proves that she’s one of the best actors working in Hollywood today. I think the camera work in this movie is really good. it maintains a gritty voyeuristic perspective that gives you the idea that you’re peeking into a world that’s not your own. Some of the imagery in this movie seems like it would make a beautiful painting or at least made me consider tracking down some stills for my desktop background.
Overall this is a decent movie but just doesn’t have enough legs to stand on its own. It has an interesting premise with a story that goes nowhere and is hurt by being a character study due to poor story or inconsistent acting. The imagery tries to distract from the weaknesses but can’t do enough to maintain interest. I can’t recommend much to seek this movie out however if you would like to see Jennifer Connelly creating a beautifully gut wrenching performance as a homeless heroin addict then this is the movie for you!
