At this point, Jason Statham has become his own movie genre. When you see “Jason Statham” on a movie poster, you generally know exactly what you’re getting: a former operative, cop, soldier, or otherwise highly trained badass who has settled into a quieter life, only to be pushed back into action when someone threatens the people closest to him. Then, he proceeds to kill a whole lot of very bad people. Mutiny is no exception.
We’ve seen Statham play variations of this character countless times, and actors are often criticized for playing the same role in every movie. Yet somehow, Statham continues to make it work. He knows exactly what audiences want from him, and he delivers it with the confidence of someone who has perfected a very specific craft. It simply wouldn’t be a Jason Statham movie without a nearly unstoppable tough guy beating the living hell out of a bunch of criminals.
Here, Statham plays Cole Reed, a former cop who now works as a security guard for a wealthy tycoon. The movie actually takes a little more time than expected to establish its story, giving Cole a life outside of the action before everything inevitably falls apart. But if you’ve seen movies like The Beekeeper or Wrath of Man, you know there is perhaps no better inciting incident for a Jason Statham movie than someone killing a person close to Jason Statham.
From there, Mutiny introduces one of the most absurd plot conveniences in recent action-movie history. After Cole kills all the henchmen involved in the attack, he takes one henchman’s ID and uses it to gain access to a highly secure cargo ship. The entire plot depends on Cole looking enough like this random henchman for nobody to question his identity. It is an absolutely ridiculous coincidence. The movie might as well have stopped and announced, “Don’t think about this too hard.”
Fortunately, you’re not watching Mutiny for airtight realism. You’re watching it for the action. Once Cole gets onto the ship, he discovers that there is a human trafficking operation taking place, with men, women, and children being held inside one of the cargo containers. Statham has already recently taken down human traffickers in A Working Man, and there is something undeniably satisfying about watching him continue to make life miserable for some of the worst people imaginable.
From the moment Cole stops a trafficker from hurting a woman and her child, Mutiny kicks into gear. The violence is gloriously brutal and frequently creative, with Cole using whatever happens to be within reach as a weapon. At one point, he takes out a guy with a padlock, which is exactly the kind of ridiculous improvised weaponry that makes these movies so much fun. Director Jean-François Richet has a great handle on the movie’s violent tone. He frequently lets blood splatter across the camera lens, giving the action a visceral, almost tactile quality. The choreography is strong, and there is an unmistakable sense of momentum as Cole tears through a conveyor belt of bad guys.
Essentially, Mutiny is Die Hard on a boat. Die Hard remains one of the most influential action movies ever made, and its fingerprints are all over this movie. There are sequences where Cole crawls through cramped spaces with nothing but a lighter illuminating his path, which is pure John McClane. There are moments when he hides just out of sight of the bad guys, trying to stay quiet as they search for him. And, of course, there is the basic premise: one man trapped in a single location filled with heavily armed criminals, systematically taking them down.
The biggest difference is that John McClane was vulnerable. Cole Reed is Jason Statham. He is practically invincible. Unlike McClane, Cole rarely displays much vulnerability, and there is never much doubt that he will eventually win. The fun comes from wondering how he’s going to do it. Watching Statham figure out increasingly inventive ways to destroy the next guy is basically the entire appeal.
Annabelle Wallis also brings some energy to the movie as Angie, a woman who is desperate to make it home to her daughter but suddenly finds herself trapped aboard a ship full of human traffickers. She teams up with Cole to survive and, importantly, isn’t simply relegated to being a damsel in distress. Angie gets to kick some ass herself, giving Wallis some enjoyable moments alongside Statham.
Interestingly, Mutiny feels like the feature-length version of one of the better ideas buried inside one of his weaker films, Expendables 4: Statham tearing through bad guys aboard a ship. Here, the entire movie is essentially built around that concept, and it is considerably more successful. The villain, unfortunately, is considerably less memorable. Roland Møller plays a fairly generic bad guy, and the character feels like another variation on villains he has played in movies such as Atomic Blonde and Skyscraper. There isn’t much depth to him, and Mutiny would have benefited from a more compelling antagonist. The ending also pushes the movie’s already questionable logic even further, with several developments that strain credibility. But, again, logic is not exactly why you bought a ticket to a Jason Statham movie. You came for the Statham. And boy, does he deliver.
These days, Statham feels like one of the few actors keeping the traditional mid-budget action movie alive in theaters. While Hollywood increasingly gravitates toward massive superhero franchises and billion-dollar spectacles, Statham keeps making movies designed to simply give audiences a tough guy, a bunch of bad guys, and two hours of increasingly ridiculous violence. There is something comforting about that. You know exactly what you’re going to get, and that is precisely why you’re there.
The plot is occasionally absurd, its villain is thinly written, and its logic frequently collapses under scrutiny. But the action is brutal, the choreography is endlessly enjoyable, Annabelle Wallis gets to throw some punches, and Jason Statham gets to be Jason Statham. At this point, that is a genre all its own, and honestly, I’m perfectly happy to keep watching it.
SCORE: 7/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 7 equates to “Good.” A successful piece of entertainment that is worth checking out, but it may not appeal to everyone.
Disclosure: ComingSoon attended a press screening for our Mutiny review.
