The Only Believable ‘Mutiny’ Will Be By Paying Audiences

Jason Statham movies aren’t always good, but Jason Statham always excels at being Jason Statham. Bear this in mind before seeing Mutiny, a forgettable thriller with a generic name that makes the most of the venerable British action star’s considerable acumen for close-combat fight choreography. Bloke can still kick arse. And few actors can project so much menacing fuck-it energy with such intense glares — especially when they’re rocking a jean jacket.

Mutiny ★★ (2/5 stars)
Directed by: Jean-François Richet
Written by: Lindsay Michel, J.P. Davis
Starring: PJason Statham, Annabelle Wallis, Roland Møller, Adrian Lester, Ramon Tikaram
Running time: 95 mins

Like most Jason Statham movies, Mutiny is all about revenge. Someone does him wrong, he’s out for retribution. In this case, the impetus is Bangkok billionaire boss Tibu Campallo (Ramon Tikaram), a kind-hearted shipping magnate who dotes on his personal bodyguard, po-faced Cole Reed (Jason Statham). They spend their nights playing chess, because Tibu loves him like a son.

Which is weird, because Tibu actually has a son: soft-boy rich kid Kameron Campallo (Chaneil Kular). Tibu just secured a deal to sell the company he built from the ground up, KMG Shipping, because he wants his son to “start fresh.” Huh? Yeah, start fresh with a billion dollars. Good parenting.

The night of his retirement, Tibu is the one handing out Rolex watches — one to Kameron, because he’s literally done nothing but be born rich; and one to Reed, because he literally saved Tibu’s life five years earlier. Ironically, later that night, Reed fails at saving Tibu’s life in an ambush. Don’t give people Rolexes until they retire, people!

Some dirty Bangkok cops are involved in the ambush, and Reed, who escapes, gets framed for Tibu’s murder as well as the murder of all the crooked cops who attacked him. Before he leaves the scene of the crime, Reed rifles through the assassins’ truck and finds a backpack with a U.S. passport for a guy who is a dead ringer for Jason Statham and is also coincidentally on the manifest for KMG cargo ship The Artemis. Perfect!

So the suit-loving Reed puts on a jean jacket to look more blue-collar and boards the Artemis to get some answers — and maybe even a little bit of vengeance. Does he slip onto the ship and spy on the crew to find out more about the plot to kill Tibu? No, he climbs into one of the lifeboats and falls asleep. Later, while snooping around the cargo bays, he hears voices and discovers a shipping container full of people. Human trafficking!

Also among the crew is by-the-book KMG employee Angie Ellis (Annabelle Wallis), a last-minute replacement for the ship’s now-missing Third Mate (presumably killed in the ambush? We’ll never know). Angie also stumbles on the shipping container full of people, as Reed spies from afar, and runs to tell the head of the Artemis, a shady Dutchman named Captain Marko Madsen (Roland Møller). He feigns surprise at the report of human trafficking and flatly drones “Let’s follow protocol” to one of his henchmen. By which he means hog-tie Angie and lock up the shipping container full of people.

Obviously the bad guys have been using KMG’s ships for clandestine human trafficking. So they should totally assassinate Tibu, the man who just sold KMG to the bad guys. His assassination makes no sense and didn’t need to happen. If the nefarious human traffickers had just let Tibu retire and spend his nights playing chess with Reed, none of this would have been uncovered! But now Reed knows everything and has to kill everyone on board.

The rest of Mutiny is devoted to watching Reed do Die Hard cosplay as he crawls through air ducts, evades Captain Madsen, and picks off evil henchmen one by one. He also rescues Angie and sort-of teams up with her, although they keep getting separated and doing their own thing. Because Jason Statham works better when he’s slaughtering alone.

Angie does send out a distress signal to a nearby U.S. Navy ship helmed by Captain Adam Spencer (Adrian Lester), who spends his brief screen time totally befuddled. Lester, a classically-trained, Olivier-award winning British thespian is here reduced to looking confused and fronting an American accent to deliver lines like this: ‘A cop-killing fugitive. Just what this shit-show was missing.” Actually, this shit-show is missing a clever story with compelling characters, but even that level of dialogue is beyond Mutiny.

We’re here to watch Jason Statham fight, and it’s actually very impressive. The surprisingly fluid and shockingly brutal athleticism that the aging actor continues to display — especially in tight surroundings like narrow hallways, tight stairwells, and dense shipping container rows — is low-brow breathtaking. The ad-hoc weaponry is pretty inventive, too, including a particular bit of maiming with an unfastened Masterlock that rips open a goon’s cheek

Aside from the close-range glock-and-uzi gunplay, Reed uses knives — even one plunged into his shoulder — as well as a fire ax, a meat hook, and a harpoon gun. He’s also adept at turning a swinging door into a deadly tactical weapon. “This is for Tibu,” he growls. Amen, brother! Oh, wait, did this movie have a plot? Never mind.