Mutiny Review: You’ll Swear You’ve Seen This Jason Statham Movie Before

Mutiny Review: Jason Statham's Formulaic Action Flick Is Destined To Induce Déjà Vu

Jason Statham’s latest movie is as uninspired as it is lacking in tension. Even viewers expecting nothing more than solid action may be disappointed.

The age of the A-list action star may be long gone, but that doesn’t stop Jason Statham from churning out a new movie full of punches, kicks, gunshots, and explosions at a rate that rivals Stallone and Schwarzenegger in the 1980s. With a recent track record of action flicks best described as hit-or-miss, his latest venture, Mutiny, may just be least remarkable of the bunch.

From director Jean-François Richet (Plane), Mutiny stars Statham as Cole Reed, a former marine currently employed as the head bodyguard for a billionaire shipping magnate. When he witnesses and is framed for the murder of his boss, Cole embarks on a one-man crusade aboard a cargo ship, determined to find the real murderers and expose a global conspiracy far more insidious than he initially realized.

Mutiny Squanders An Intriguing Set-Up

Mutiny begins on intriguing, albeit routine footing as Statham’s predictably infallible ex-military protagonist finds himself at the center of a potentially interesting mystery. The death of his warm and exceedingly generous employer, played by the excellent Ramon Tikaram, poses a question to both Cole and, in turn, the audience that could lay the foundation for a little more than the average action movie.

Very quickly, however, and rather jarringly, the film shelves this intrigue by clumsily finding a way to put Statham on a boat and set the stage for the action to unfold. The transition from the initial set-up to the cargo ship, the sole setting for the remainder of the movie, is so poorly executed that one could be forgiven for questioning if the set-up was for an entirely different movie. Eventually, Mutiny circles back around to connect the disparate pieces, but it takes far too long to do so.

Underlying this jarring transition is a pivot away from the mystery and toward a conspiracy involving sex trafficking. Although this shift immediately raises the stakes for everyone involved and very easily establishes who the bad guys are, it makes for a painfully straightforward conflict, one far less interesting than the initial mystery teased by the prologue.

Uninteresting Characters And Lack Of Tension Render Mutiny A Meandering Watch

Once Statham boards the ship, Mutiny amounts to 70-ish minutes of the action movie veteran stealthily wandering the halls of a massive cargo ship, occasionally (but not nearly frequently enough) taking out a bunch of henchmen, as moustache-twirling villains try and fail to stop the insurmountable force that is Jason Statham.

The meandering through the nooks and crannies of the cargo ship lacks any semblance of tension, despite the obvious peril Cole and Annabelle Wallis’ Angi are in. The latter joins Statham's side as his sole ally against acclaimed Danish actor Roland Møller, whose muscle-bound, tattoo-sporting brute of a ship captain is easily the highlight of the film.

Wallis, despite her talents, contributes little to a movie decidedly uninterested in giving its performers anything real to work with. Her character’s desire to make it safely off the boat and return home to her daughter is frustratingly uninspired, as is Reed’s half-baked pursuit of vengeance for the death of his employer, who he has known for five years. Taking itself far too seriously for much of its runtime, and devoid of any wit when it finally tries to throw some levity into the mix, Mutiny struggles to do much of anything particularly well.

Mutiny Simply Can’t Compare To The Inventiveness Of Other Modern Action Movies

Most audience members aren’t coming to a Jason Statham-led action movie for character development, however. They come for the action – of which, as stated, there is disappointingly little. Statham may spend much of Mutiny holding a gun and ready to strike, but seldom is he actually engaged in combat with enemies. Instead, he can be found crouched down, navigating corners of the cargo ship, and trying to avoid detection.

When the action does arrive, it fails to captivate, in part due to the landscape of action movies in which this movie is being released. The likes of John Wick, Mad Max: Fury Road, and, more recently, The Furious have raised the bar in regard to the inventiveness and intricacy of action choreography and set-pieces. As such, movies like Mutiny, while featuring a handful of delightfully brutal kills, pale in comparison to other contemporary action movies out there for audiences to feast on.

The sole compelling action sequence of the entire film comes near the very end, as Statham’s hero and Møller’s antagonist are finally given the opportunity to go head-to-head. At last, a fight sustains a high level of tension throughout, managing to elicit winces, sweaty palms, and tense shoulders from audience members as every blow is palpably felt. If the whole movie had packed the same punch as this climactic duel does, Mutiny may have at least delivered in the one department it had to get right.

Perhaps the most egregious misstep of all is the sense that one has seen Mutiny before. Richet’s film feels destined to induce déjà vu among anyone who has seen even a couple of Jason Statham movies in the past 10 years. Aimless, dull, and uninspired with its action, Statham’s latest is a ship most viewers will want to jump off of.

Mutiny releases wide in theaters on Friday, August 21.