I have never made a secret of my abiding belief that Jason Statham makes anything he’s in better. There is something about his brand of unstudied cool that has a mystique all its own with none of the showy bravado of a Brando, or the ironic remove of McQueen. I bring this up because for all his star power, Statham, alas, is not able to save everything in which he appears. Sometimes he can only make it almost watchable. And so it is with MUTINY, an otherwise unremarkable action flick rife with clichés and twists that aren’t as clever as they want or need to be.
This time out he’s Cole Reed, personal bodyguard and confidant to Tibu Campallo (Ramon Tikaram), a Thai self-made billionaire who has not forgotten his roots and is about to sell his shipping business and free his son, Kameron (Chaneil Kular), who is uninterested in the company, to pursue his own dreams. In a quick rundown of familiar tropes, we learn that Tibu is the sort of guy who remembers when it’s Cole’s dad’s birthday, built his business without breaking any laws, and dies telling Cole to take care of Kameron. That last part proves tricky because the people who ambushed Tibu as Cole was driving him home from the retirement party (where both Kameron and Cole received expensive watches) are also framing him for his employer’s murder. Call the police? I think not. They are in on it as is one of Tibu’s business associates (Simon Kluth).
For reasons that make sense in the context of contrived cinematic situations, Cole’s vow of vengeance is helped along by being able to sneak aboard one of Tibu’s container ships as an American sailor who bears a convenient resemblance to him. Why go aboard the ship? Again, context of contrived cinematic situations. Not to mention the martial possibilities of narrow spaces, a confined theater of war with lots of nooks and crannies in which to fight it out to the death, and no cell reception. Add a dash of human trafficking with a lovely young trafficked mother who speaks English, her impossibly adorable little girl, and a comely ex-Navy officer, Angie Ellis (Annabelle Wallis) added as the last minute as 3rd mate and you have all the necessary elements in place for good to battle the evil of multi-national riff-raff with a few calculated heart-tugging moments.
The word rote floats to mind when considering the premise and execution. It all chugs along pretty much as expected with a captain (Roland Møller) obviously corrupt when Angie reports the captives that it plays as satire rather than drama. As for the non-stop slaughter of the 20-man crew by Cole, it benefits from Statham’s ci-mentioned cool but not even the novel weaponization of an open padlock can overcome the stale repetition of moves we’ve seen many, many times in many, many flicks like this. Of note, though, is that despite a considerable body count, the gore is surprisingly minimal considering the bullets, the knives, the broken glass, the Teamster’s hook, and the spear gun involved in the process.
The best part is, of course, Statham, who can dodge a bullet, escape a water-tight room, and dangle off the side of a ship with such menace that any passing orca would surrender immediately along with its entire pod. It’s the way he doesn’t waste energy getting emotional, he gets down to business with just a hint of being irritated about having to take out the trash.
As for Wallis, she’s game enough for the action and is blessed with the sort of SoCal blonde good looks that make her Bo Derek for the 21st century. Points for making her character capable of taking care of herself in a limited fashion. As for Tikaram, he’s avuncular without being overly cloying, and Kular does a fine job of looking as though his character is in over his head at all times while still looking natty in exquisitely tailored suits. The second-best actor here is Adrian Lester as the Navy captain whose ship receives the distress call from send from the Artemis by Angie. The epitome of miliary confidence that doesn’t need swagger, he makes a lesser role interesting by making it reasonable to suspect that the reasons for that distress call being, ahem, called off by the Artemis’s captain are less than kosher. He also serves as the vehicle for exposition that reveals Cole’s unconventional past and need for a father figure like Tibu. If we have to endure flat exposition, at least it’s coming from this guy.
MUTINY ends with Statham getting the last word, and he delivers it with everything he’s got and everything we rely on him to be. It’s just not enough to have made the preceding oeuvre worth sitting through. Never mind. The best thing about Jason Statham is that he will be back on the big screen soon, giving us all hope that his return will be in a better effort.
Your Thoughts?