Some days you spend over three and a half hours rewatching, and re-evaluating, something like Heaven's Gate. Other days you end up enjoying the latest slice of action nonsense built around the heroic Jason Statham. Variety is the spice of life.
Variety is also something you tend not to get with Jason Statham movies. Not that I am saying that in any majorly critical way. I watch most Jason Statham movies to watch Statham punch and kick people in the face, powered by his athleticism and a righteous fury, and most Jason Statham movies deliver exactly that. Some are a slight side-step (and I wish he would try more comedy, he's genuinely very good at it), but most give you exactly what you're after.
Mutiny, if you have seen any of the advertising, has been marketed as Statham's Die Hard on a freighter ship, and that's all you really need to know. After the murder of his boss, Cole Reed (Statham) ends up nosing around on a big boat that happens to be involved in some horrible human trafficking. Assisted by a member of the crew, Angie Ellis (Annabelle Wallis), Cole starts getting rid of the bad guys while trying to protect the vulnerable victims on board the ship. He's got a number of decent foes to battle, but it soon becomes clear that Captain Marko Madsen (Roland Møller) may be the final boss.
Originally envisioned as a sequel to Plane, and it may have been named "Ship" at that point, this was reworked and Statham-ised by writers Lindsay Michel and J. P. Davis, who have delivered a screenplay that feels self-aware and knowing without ever deigning to fully wink at the audience. Our hero has a background in various forces, of course, and doesn't always get along with people who want to make compromises for the sake of politics. And while it's hard to avoid comparisons to the mighty Die Hard, one or two shots seem constructed to specifically reference that action movie classic.
Director Jean-François Richet knows that he's now helming something very different from Plane, and he does good work in setting up an interesting environment and ensuring the action is crunchy and entertaining enough to make up for the fairly weak dialogue and paper-thin characterisations.
While Statham may not win any awards for his acting, he consistently looks like someone that could easily punch my head clean off without breaking a sweat, and that's what's needed here. It might be easy to mock his particular brand of cinematic violence, but I would argue that he's currently one of the best in his field when it comes to this enjoyable nonsense. Wallis isn't too bad alongside him, although I don't think I've ever seen a performance from her that has convinced me of her being worthy of any star billing. Adrian Lester and Steven Blades do well in much smaller roles, but Møller is the only other real standout, especially when he has to begrudgingly get his hands dirty as he realises that the rest of his crew aren't up to the task of taking down one pesky interloper.
It might not feel like a film you should rush to the cinema to see, Statham would have been an amazing straight-to-video stalwart a few decades ago, but Mutiny is a bloody good time. And sometimes showing your support for something that's a bloody good time helps people to raise finances for other movies that turn out to be a bloody good time. I'm not going to rate it too highly though, considering the predictability and weaker elements, but fans of solid action will definitely want to check this out.
7/10
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