As they say in what is left of journalism, three is a trend. And No. 3 just happens to be British actor Paul Bettany’s directing-and-screenwriting debut, “Shelter,” an admirable attempt at presenting a difficult subject that suffers from an eventual pileup of melodramatic happenstances.
At least the first-time helmsman is blessed with two highly skilled and incredibly watchable actors as his leads. Anthony Mackie is Nigerian immigrant Tahir, adrift after his visa has run out, while Jennifer Connelly (who happens to be Bettany’s wife) is heroin addict Hannah, at her wit’s end and ready to call it a day as she ponders jumping off a train-yard overpass.
They both wander the streets of an uninviting Manhattan with dreary alley ways and corners that would never make the cut in a Woody Allen film. Yet they survive, though barely. Tahir entertains the passing hordes with his rhythmic drumming on plastic construction buckets while eliciting donations. Hannah prefers to plop down at a busy intersection and hold up a cardboard sign declaring “I used to be someone” with a paper cup for spare change and occasional cigarettes.
Their fates suddenly become intertwined when he spies his stolen jacket around her waist. His courtly manners and acts of kindness eventually earn her trust, and they become a team. That is when “Shelter” turns into a sort of urban fairy tale as the pair happen upon a magic castle in the form of a luxury brownstone whose vacationing owners left a door unlocked. Fine wine, hot showers, comfy linens and closets groaning with designer clothes allow them to play “let’s pretend” and feel human again, even inspiring Hannah to kick her habit cold turkey.
Posing in a red-carpet-worthy white gown, her pale wraith-like body barely filling out the yards of expensive fabric, she says, “I must look like a zombie Goldilocks.” Tahir, gazing upon her like a besotted Prince Charming in his borrowed suit, declares, “You are more beautiful than I have words for you.”
Yes, love is in the air, but enjoying such creature comforts also has loosened their tongues and their sharing of their painful pasts puts them at odds. Bettany the writer is too quick to undercut the most enjoyable portion of the story to interject a source of all-too-convenient tension between the characters, while tossing the Iraq war and terrorism into the thematic mix. But it is appreciated that Tahir is allowed to express his faith in Allah even if he questions some tenets of his religion.
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