Review:  ‘Shelter’ views horrors of homelessness from a place of privilege

Unrelenting misery masquerades as social commentary in writer-director Paul Bettany’s “Shelter,” a drama that imagines the horrors of homelessness in New York.

Jennifer Connelly is Hannah, a widowed junkie, and Anthony Mackie plays Tahir, an undocumented Nigerian immigrant. When the two connect, they face the challenges of their harsh world together. Then Bettany showers upon them an avalanche of misfortune.

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A tone of bleak desperation casts a dark cloud over the proceedings, obliterating any other emotion as cascading catastrophes send the pair further into abjection. Though Bettany is addressing the reality of sexual exploitation and violence that homeless women face, the presentation of the indignities visited on Hannah feels gratuitous.

“Shelter” can’t decide on which socio-political issues it wants to highlight, shoehorning in the Iraq War, terrorism, Boko Haram, immigration, healthcare and addiction. With so many hot-button topics, the film can’t get beyond the surface. Tahir, a complicated character fleeing war and terrorism in Nigeria, eventually is reduced to the “magical Negro” stereotype, one who only serves to help Hannah return to the comforts of her upper-middle-class life. The character of Tahir is woefully underwritten for the power of a performer like Mackie.

The film’s dedication, “for the couple who lived outside my building,” may be well-intentioned but feels presumptuous. The story on screen comes off as a naive interpretation of the homeless experience as imagined from a place of great privilege.

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“Shelter”

MPAA rating: R for language, sexual content, brief drug use.

Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.

Playing: Laemmle’s Ahrya Fine Arts, Beverly Hills.