Director: Jean-François Richet
Writer: J.P. Davis, Lindsay Michel
Stars: Jason Statham, Annabelle Wallis, Adrian Lester
Synopsis: After his billionaire industrialist boss is murdered in front of him, Cole Reed is set up to take the fall for the crime — leaving him on the run as he works to uncover an international conspiracy.
I remember my grandparents once telling me that if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all. So, let me start here: if you have 90 minutes to waste, there are certainly worse ways to spend them than watching Jason Statham’s latest. Unfortunately, I’m also obligated to point out the ineptitude and laziness of Mutiny.
And if Grandpa Frank is looking down at me today, I’d remind him that when he gave me that advice, he never had to sit through a Statham-by-the-numbers action picture that is anything but spectacular. So much for smooth sailing, as the viewer has no choice but to go overboard, and even the most passionate Statham supporters have no choice but to abandon ship.
Yes, you know exactly what you’re getting in a Jason Statham thriller like Mutiny. The modern-day Steven Seagal, minus the obligatory environmental message and slapfighting, has produced his own brand of action-movie comfort food: inane plot points, generic characterizations, and the same tried-and-true recipe.
Unfortunately, “Handsome Rob’s” latest formula is a New Coke version, not the classic. To illustrate the point, a scene in Mutiny is so laughable and befuddling that it shows how little the filmmakers respect their audience. In the scene, the villain knows Statham’s character is going to create a diversion. The foe knows the hero has to get to the bridge.
Why? Simple: to contact the authorities. It’s the one place they can do it. Even the high-seas menace says out loud that he knows exactly why the diversion is happening. Yet, all the bad guys run off in search of the dangerous Mr. Clean, leaving just one villain to guard the freighter’s communications deck, the sole connection to the outside world.
Mutiny is that kind of film. The script, from Lindsay Michel (Sandpiper) and J. P. Davis (Plane), offers your standard action fare. Statham plays Cole Reed, a former London police officer who also served in the British Army’s Special Forces. Reed comes from a long line of cops but lost his job after failing to play the political game necessary to climb the bureaucratic ladder.
Cole works as a personal bodyguard for Tibu (Ramon Tikaram, of the upcoming The Magic Faraway Tree), a wealthy billionaire industrialist and shipping tycoon. Tibu considers Cole family after he saved his life five years earlier. Reed plays chess with Tibu nightly and even gifts him a Rolex for his retirement.
Tibu has decided to sell the business so his son, Kameron (Black Narcissus’s Chaneil Kular), can pursue his own path. Which, frankly, makes no sense. Tibu is a billionaire. He can fund his son’s dreams and still keep his baby. But then we wouldn’t have a plot point to move the story along excruciatingly, painfully.
If you watched the trailer, you know what happens next. It is pretty obvious who is involved, making it painfully clear you just have to add or subtract who was there. Statham’s character then heads to one of Tebu’s ships, on flimsy evidence, to seek vengeance, where he finds Angie (Annabelle Wallis), a last-minute addition to the crew, who tags along for the ride.
Mutiny is from Jean-François Richet, whose Plane is one of the most overrated action films in recent memory. The film here is incredibly predictable, with some bone-crunching action in between to pass the time. The rest of the film, like the scene described above, is plot-induced incompetence, idiot logic, and artificial jeopardy.
A handful of scenes are like the one described above. For one, after Cole rescues a group of human-trafficking victims, he tells them not to wait for him and to leave immediately. He takes off, and at least ten minutes pass. Yet, in a later scene, no more than 20 people are somehow still piling into a lifeboat, allowing the villains to catch up and recapture them.
By then, the group could have floated by the Statue of Liberty. But again, Mutiny is that kind of film, one that asks you to ignore cinematic incompetence to watch Statham break bones and end lives. Yes, the genre is deliberately formulaic, but for a Statham film, this has a remarkable blind spot for polishing all the absurdity.
You can watch Mutiny exclusively in theaters starting August 21st!
