Oh Jason Statham, where will you turn up next?
I don’t know if it’s just my imagination, but are we getting more Statham movies a year than we used to? It’s just with the likes of The Meg 2, The Beekeeper, A Working Man, Shelter and now Mutiny, it seems that the Stath is working overtime to secure his place as the number one guy when it comes to violent, disposable action. But with his latest, we find him riding the coat tails of one of his predecessors, as the plot of Mutiny finds him plucking the “Die Hard on a boat” strings of Steven Segal’s Under Siege.
Directed by Jean-François Richet and originally meant as a sequel to his previous film, Plane, the movie changed from “Ship” to “Mutiny” once Gérard Butler backed out. However, even with the nasally growl of Statham steering the boat, is jumping aboard a film that Gerard Butler turned down really a wise thing to do?
Cole Reed is the typical sort of monosyllabic tough guy we’ve seen a million times before. Hulking and mean with a past that’s seen him hop from being ex-military to ex-police, he’s now the head bodyguard for shipping magnate Tibu Campallo; but under that harsh exterior is someone with layers, man. Over the years, his kindly boss has accepted him like family and even Tibu’s son, Kameron, sees the hulking security dude as some sort of surrogate uncle. However, treating a Jason Statham character with fatherly warmth is never a wise thing to do as it tends to place a narrative bullseye on your back the size of a wagon wheel.
Sure enough, after leaving a fancy do one night, Cole and Tibu are ambushed by thugs on the drive back to the hotel – but while the steely-eyed bodyguard manages to kill every single one of them, Tibu catches a fatal stray and suddenly Cole is down one father figure and probably an end of year bonus. However, our lead isn’t one to let such a thing go unpunished, so after discovering that one of the highly trained goons is a member of the crew of the Artemis, a cargo ship that’s due to leave in a few hours, Cole decides to investigate – sorry, I meant to type eviscerate. Extra pissed that he’s been framed from Timu’s murder, Cole hopes that boarding the boat and looking around will give him the answers (and vengence) he seeks.
Meanwhile, while the crew of the Artemis gets ready to set sail, grizzled captain Marko Madsen isn’t particularly happy that he’s been sent a new third mate in the form of Angie Ellis. This is because she isn’t privy to the human smuggling operation he’s got going on in the hold that he’s been mounting under the noses of his bosses, but while a stowaway Cole is first to find the miserable souls locked away in a shipping container, Annie soon follows and both end up being hunted by Marko’s gun totting crew who eagerly aim to blow away the stowaway.
Even for a modern Jason Statham action movie, Mutiny is staggeringly unoriginal. Oh, it’s handsomely mounted alright, and it contains more than enough boat-set carnage to appease non-discriminating fans of the bald one’s output of plugging thugs and kicking crooks, but it’s still weird that no one at any point thought to pump the brakes and stop the film from simply being an obvious Die Hard rip-off. In fact, simply being a Die Hard rip-off wouldn’t be so bad, but the the fact that it’s a rip-off of a Die Hard rip-off (the aforementioned Under Siege) means that maybe director Jean-François Richet should have picked another mode of transport to kill people on. Even more confusing is that while a lot of films that emerged in the wake of John McClane’s severe renovation of the Nakatomi Plaza aimed to have the easygoing wit and charm of John McTernan’s classic (Segal’s vehicle included), Mutiny opts to be a grim, determined affair, with it’s scowling lead not even bothering to drop the odd one-liner after messily dispatching a foe.
That’s not to say that every action film has to employ audience-friendly wise cracks and self-aware wit, but after spending 95 minutes watching Statham intently slaughter a seabound human trafficking crew without a single bit of levity, you kind of wonder what was the point of it all. Sure, it’s slick and surprisingly well shot and it carries a nice line in detailed, brutal violence; but without any of that sandpaper-rough charm Statham is known to have, even the sight of him fish-hooking the cheek of a man with a padlock ends up falling a little flat. Even the introduction of Annabelle Wallis’ character weirdly goes nowhere as while there’s mercifully no romance – tough to woo someone when you’re snapping someone’s neck with a slammed door – there’s no real connection between them other than a quick chat about her past and some terse back and forth. In fact any character other than Cole and the men he’s hunting feel weirdly extraneous and only seem to have been added to the script to be able to cut away to characters who can explain the plot. Adrian Lester and his crew made up of plainly English actors all brush up on their American accents to play navel types on exposition duty, while Cole is freed up to scamper through air ducts and attack people with hooks.
Like I said, it’s all slickly delivered thanks to Richet understanding the economy of action, nut whenever Statham is hauling off on badguys with blistering punches and small arms fire, you get the sense that this film could have been a pretty great potboiler. The violence is swift and vicious and utilises its surroundings pretty well, but it’s po-faced and incredibly serious nature won’t let it stop and smell the roses for even a second. There’s no real tension to be found, because Cole is such an unstoppable murder machine, the film gives him all the vulnerability of a concrete rhino and similarly, the villains are such cookie-cutter threats with no personality whatsoever you’d expect their birth certificate to read “Thug #3” rather them having an actual name.
The action is cool and the production values are surprisingly solid with nary a sign of obvious green screen, but Mutiny is so devoid of any personality whatsoever, you can’t even fully enjoy the dubious pleasures of the Stath shooting someone in the head with a harpoon gun. I mean, if I can’t cheer at that, then what’s the point of watching a film where that happens? It’s like like sitting on a rollercoaster that only goes up, and the insistance on gritty seriousness means that it kills the excitement. In fact, Statham isn’t even committing mutiny technically – he’s not actually a member of the crew for a start (although Angie is certainly guilty of the titular act), but I guess it’s better than naming the film “Stowaway” I suppose…
Empty characters and a business-like tone manage to smother what throwaway fun this film could have offered. In fact, if you typed “Jason Statham Under Siege movie (no jokes)” into ChatGPT, chances are Mutiny is what you’d get. Richet has a good eye for violence and the Stath still has the moves, but for a film that takes itself way too seriously, Mutiny hardly pushes the boat out.
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Where to watch Mutiny: