We open on a small isolated island off the coast of Scotland. Michael Mason (Jason Statham) lives alone with his dog. With only a small house, lighthouse, and boathouse, he lives a solitary existence. To keep himself going, he receives supplies from Jessie (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) and her Uncle, who unbeknownst to her, served with Mason. Mason watches from his house as they arrive. Jessie rows out to the shore of the island and carries a crate of supplies to the boathouse. Before she leaves though, she places a small box, a gift for Mason. She rows back to her uncle’s boat as Mason watches. After they leave, he goes down to the boathouse to retrieve the crate. He sees the gift box and leaves it there, not wanting to get close to anyone. Mason spends the next days in contemplative silence, drinking, walking with his dog, playing chess against himself and sleeping.
Meanwhile, in London, a man named Manafort (Bill Nighy) is being grilled in front of a government committee over the use of his unethical and possibly illegal surveillance program, codenamed THEA. The panel notes that Manafort’s program has tapped into every single phone and camera in the UK, collecting and storing information, basically making a police state. Manafort tries to defend THEA, noting that its use has prevented dozens of attacks and has led to the identification of numerous terrorists.
Soon after the hearing, Manafort meets with the Prime Minister and they discuss how the fallout of the THEA program makes everything awkward for the government. Cutting off the recording equipment that the office has, The Prime Minister proposes a deal to Manafort. Publically, he will be fired to show accountability, and his protégé Roberta (Naomi Ackie) will take over. In return, Manafort will be allowed to “return to the shadows” and run his operatives and his THEA program as he sees fit. Manafort agrees and The Prime Minister congratulates him on his “retirement.”
Several days later, Jessie and her uncle are at Mason’s island to make a supply run during a really bad storm. Jessie’s uncle tells her to quickly drop the supplies off and return back as the storm is getting worse. However, when she reaches the shore, she brings the supplies to Mason’s door and loudly knocks. When he answers, she hands over the supplies and tries to hand him the gift she left for him. “Most people say thank you,” Jessie says. Mason tells her never to come up to the door again. As he tries to shut it, Jessie lodges her foot to stop it. She tells Mason she isn’t afraid of him. Mason closes the door.
Due to her confronting Mason, time has run out and the storm has gotten worse. Her uncle’s boat is being rocked by the waves and he is trying to hold position for her to return. Jessie gets in her boat but is knocked around by the current. Soon enough, both her and her uncle’s boats capsized in the water. Mason looks outside and notices that they are both gone and springs into action. Going to his boathouse, he drops his own boat with an engine from a ramp and goes searching for them. Forced to dive in himself, he finds Jessie caught in the ropes of her uncle’s boat. Freeing her, he looks deeper into the water, and sees that her Uncle has drowned, caught in the cabin of his boat. Unable to do anything more for the man, Mason surfaces with Jessie and he gets them back to the island.
The next day, Jessie wakes up, with a bruised ankle that is infected. Mason tells her she’ll have to stay for a few days. When Jessie asks about her uncle, Mason has to tell her that he drowned, devastating her. They spend a few days in a routine of her trying to heal while she watches him drink, play chess, and sleep. Eventually, she goes looking in his things and finds a knife. She also sees he finally opened her gift; a small snow globe with a lighthouse in it. When Mason comes to check on her ankle, Jessie, thinking he means her harm, threatens him with the knife. Rather than be angry, Mason shows her the correct way to hold it. Jessie asks him why he hasn’t called the police and that people will be looking for her. Mason says he can’t and that he is aware she’s now fully an orphan; her mother died years ago, she never knew her father, and her uncle was her only known family.
Mason tells Jessie that she can go when she finally heals up. Resigned to her situation, she tries to make the best of it. Getting into her own routine, she begins to spend time with Mason’s dog (which she names Jack, a name he likes) and shows herself to be a formidable chess player. However, Mason realizes that her wound will not fully heal without proper medicine, so he travels to the mainland to visit a pharmacy. A former operative, Mason is careful to avoid all cameras, but inadvertently is caught on a cell phone camera, whose footage is fed into the THEA program, flagging him as a violent terrorist. Roberta in her new command center sees the alert and dispatches a kill squad. Manafort, from his home, sees the same alert, and winces, knowing what has potentially been uncovered.
Mason returns that night with the medicine, but hears a boat in the distance. Telling Jessie to hide in the bathroom, he forms a plan. A six man kill squad touches down on the beach. Flipping a switch, a net is unleashed, catching one man and dragging him into the water, presumably drowning him. Mason then turns on lights, blinding the men and making their night vision useless. He then drops a large boulder object on another. For a third, he smashes a lantern on his body, and shoots him with a flare gun, burning the man alive. The fourth, he stabs in the neck and then pushes him off the cliff. As Mason fights the men, another one finds his house, where Jack attacks him, causing the soldier to shoot him dead. The soldier finds Jessie in the bathroom and drags her out to the beach. Mason kills the fifth man in the boathouse, impaling him on a hook and taking his gun. As he sees Jessie being dragged to a boat, he shoots the final man dead. After grabbing supplies (and seeing his dog has been killed) Mason makes a call to a friend saying he is on the run “with baggage” and needs help. Mason and Jessie leave the island.
Back at MI6 and realizing the entire team has been killed, Roberta is shocked to her core, wondering who the hell Mason really is.
Having made it to the mainland, Mason and Jessie arrive at a farmhouse. After showing her the correct way to hold an assault rifle they took from one of the men on the island, Mason goes inside only to be stopped by the owner with a shotgun. Jessie however, gets the drop on the man and asks him nicely to drop the gun. Noting that Mason is wounded, Jessie asks for the man’s help.
As Roberta and her team try to find Mason, they intercept a police call from the farmhouse. Roberta dispatches an operative, Workman (Bryan Vigier) to bring Mason in. However, Workman is one of Manafort’s men. From his home office, Manafort contacts Workman and issues override orders; Mason is to be killed. When Workman asks about Jessie, Manafort coldly replies she is to be killed as well.
As Mason is being patched up, the farmer’s son comes in looking guilt ridden. Mason asks him if he did something, and the boy says he called the police. The police soon show up, and Roberta patches in telling them not to intervene. As the farmer tries to go outside, he is shot dead by a sniper. The sniper is Workman, mistaking him for Mason. As Roberta and her team hear that, they try to contact Workman only to see he turned off his communications and has gone rogue. Mason and Jessie leave through a side door, and Mason disables all the police officers without killing them and steals one of their cars. Workman gives chase and Mason eventually causes his car to flip over.
Mason and Jessie find a work area and switch cars.
Workman, bruised and bloody, walks down a road when a concerned woman stops her car. However, a cop stops behind her as well, and Workman kills the officer. He then steps next to the woman’s window and presumably kills her off screen and steals her car, as she was a witness to the murder.
Realizing this is becoming a huge mess, Roberta speaks with one of her coworkers, and the coworker, Maddison, notes that Mason’s picture doesn’t match the one the alert triggered. Maddison cracks the coding on the file and finds out Mason’s real file of being a decorated black ops soldier that went rogue after refusing to kill an Iranian scientist who defected. Mason faked his death and has been on the run ever since.
Mason and Jessie arrive at an isolated house in the woods, the home of Mason’s old friend and comrade, Arthur Booth (Daniel Mays). Mason needs to get passage for Jessie as she is an innocent in the middle of his mess. Jessie looks around and finds several bottles of pills. Mason learns that Arthur had switched his photo with a random common man to keep the government away from him but Manafort had replaced it with the file of a terrorist and thus sent that innocent military squad at the lighthouse to their doom. Mason tries to have Arthur help him with Jessie but Arthur tells him he can’t. Jessie comes back and reveals the reason for his reluctance; he is terminally ill with cancer. Arthur has the same medicines as her mother did when she was dying. Mason asks if this is true. Arthur sadly admits it, saying his doctors note he may have one more year left.
Workman, who had been tracking them, finds the house as they are about to leave. Mason and Workman have a drag out fight in the library. As Workman holds a knife to Mason, Jessie points a gun at him and begs him to stop, trying to speak to his dormant humanity. Ultimately unmoved, Workman snatches the gun from her and tries to kill them both. Mason tackles him and Jessie and he run to Arthur’s car and race off as Workman fires at them.
Stopping in town, Arthur gives Mason a phone to call him for an emergency. Mason tells Jessie they need to watch how they walk to make sure the cameras don’t see them. Still, a camera inside a car captures them. Manafort deletes the image from THEA, and contacts Workman with their location. However, Roberta and Maddison realize that THEA has been compromised and lays a trap. The next time Manafort tries to access, he gets locked out. Maddison and Roberta realize that Manafort is involved in what is going on but Roberta says she will have to deal with him later; their primary concern is bringing Mason in alive.
With little options left to him, Mason and Jessie travel to a nightclub which Kamal, a trafficker, owns. After beating up the outside bouncers, he is granted access and an audience. Mason tells Kamal that he will provide safe passage for Jessie with a new identity and funds to start over. Kamal says he has no leverage to demand anything from him. Mason counters that Kamal was allowed free reign for years but now that Manafort is back “in the shadows” there is nothing stopping him from being killed as another loose end. Convinced, Kamal tells Mason to wait as he makes preparations.
Manafort, made aware of Mason’s location, sends a team of killers to the club. Roberta, also aware, sends her own team. When she realizes her team is minutes away, while Manafort’s are already in the building, she now has definitive proof of a rogue operation against Mason.
Kamal gives Mason a new identity and money for Jessie, with a boat location that will be leaving in thirty minutes. Jessie doesn’t want to go without him but Mason tells her this is the only way to keep her safe as men are still after him. Manafort’s killers storm the club. Mason sees them, and begins to take them out one by one. However, one still grabs Jessie and runs out of the club with her. With help from Arthur, who is patched into the cameras, Mason gives chase and after dodging Roberta’s team, rescues Jessie and they race off to the boat.
Having gotten to the location, Mason tells her to get on the boat, but Jessie doesn’t want to leave him behind, seeing as he is all she has left. Mason tries to comfort her and tells her it is for the best. Suddenly, gunshots ring out near them; Workman has found them. Mason drops her down to the boat, and it races off with her safe. Mason and Workman trade shots until their guns run empty. Mason tries one last time to reach Workman asking if he knows why he was sent to kill them. Workman replies that it doesn’t matter. Workman tries to attack Mason with a knife, while Mason takes a long chain and attaches a big piece of pipe. Swinging it, he smacks Workman hard in the head, breaking his neck and killing him.
Several days later, Manafort is at his mansion, watching the news as Roberta has to deal with the fallout of the mess he created. As he makes a drink, he looks outside and notices his two guards are dead. Quickly understanding the implications of that, Manafort quickly consumes his drink. He turns around and sees Mason. Manafort admonishes Mason; calling him his “golden boy” who broke the rules by growing a conscience. Mason tells him that the man he was supposed to kill was innocent. Manafort attempts to bring Mason back into the fold, now that he has full autonomy to run his Black Kite operatives however he wants to for the good of the country. Mason tells Manafort that way of thinking was the reason he didn’t pull the trigger a decade before…and why he has to now. Mason shoots Manafort dead.
Three months later in Spain, Jessie has settled into a new life. Roberta and MI6 are watching over her, knowing Mason will show up one day. They are about to move on for the day when they see the camera that is in the café Jessie is in tilt up.
Jessie is given a bag from the cashier, saying it is from a friend that briefly stopped by. As she opens it, we see Mason on the street. Jessie finds a chess piece in the bag, and realizes it is Mason’s message to let her know he’s okay. Jessie looks outside but Mason has already disappeared, content in the knowledge she will be safe.[wide]
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