At this point, I know exactly what to expect when I walk into a Jason Statham movie, and I am perfectly fine with that. In fact, that is part of the appeal. He plays essentially the same character over and over again: tough, controlled, perpetually underestimated, and capable of dismantling a room full of bad guys before most people have figured out where the exits are. Somehow, the formula still works for me.
Directed by Jean-François Richet, Mutiny puts Statham in familiar territory as Cole Reed, a former Royal Marine turned private bodyguard. When his billionaire employer is murdered and Reed is framed for the crime, he goes on the run and eventually ends up aboard a cargo ship, where his effort to clear his name leads him into a much larger international conspiracy.
There are no great surprises here. Mutiny is engaging, fast-moving, and almost entirely predictable, but predictability is not necessarily a criticism when a movie knows exactly what it wants to be. This one wants to give us Jason Statham fighting, shooting, and chasing, and generally making very bad days for a seemingly endless supply of villains. It succeeds.
There is plenty of action, plenty of violence, and, most importantly for me, plenty of Statham. Richet keeps the movie moving and gives his star plenty of opportunities to do what he does best. The fights are physical, the violence is plentiful, and the story rarely gets in the way of the next confrontation. The film carries an R rating for strong, bloody violence and language, so nobody should walk into this expecting subtle restraint.
Annabelle Wallis, Jason Wong, Roland Møller, Arnas Fedaravičius and Adrian Lester make up the key supporting cast, and they are all perfectly adequate. But let’s face it: I did not go to Mutiny for the ensemble. This is Statham’s movie from beginning to end, and everybody else is essentially there to be protected, chased, distrusted, or beaten senseless.
And yes, perhaps this is terribly shallow of me, but with all that running, fighting, and general Statham-ness going on, would it really have hurt anyone to let the man take his shirt off once?
What I enjoy about Statham is that he never seems embarrassed by the kind of movies he makes. He commits fully to the character and the action, even when we have seen variations of both many times before. He has carved out his own little corner of the action genre, and I am apparently more than willing to keep visiting it.
Mutiny is not complicated, groundbreaking, or especially difficult to predict. I knew more or less where it was headed, and I didn’t care. I was entertained from beginning to end. Sometimes a formula works because it gives an audience exactly what it came for.
And Mutiny gave me exactly what I came for: loads of action, loads of violence, and loads of Jason Statham. I loved it.