Love him or hate him, you can’t deny that Jason Statham knows what he’s good at and knows his audience. In the past few years, his production company – Punch Palace Productions – has focused on action-thrillers that star Statham in the lead as an ordinary guy who sticks up for the little guy and gets revenge.
In The Beekeeper, he took on tech bros; in A Working Man, he took on human traffickers; in Shelter, he took on a shady government agency. His new movie Mutiny sees him back after human traffickers, with the added edge of getting revenge for his friend being killed in front of him.
As ever, Statham is also playing a character who’s uniquely qualified to take said revenge, this time as Cole Reed, a Royal Marine-turned-specialist firearm police officer-turned-private security expert. (Ben Cartwright gets to deliver an exceptional version of Cole’s potted history in Mutiny, with Adrian Lester listening on, both fully aware of the movie they’re in.)
We’re not saying this as a criticism, by the way, we’re firmly on board the ‘Jason Statham gets revenge’ genre, which is why we can happily say Mutiny is a return to form after the mixed results of A Working Man and Shelter. It won’t convert anybody who foolishly isn’t a fan of ‘Jason Statham gets revenge’, but everybody else will have a damn good time.
Sky
Those fans also probably won’t need a plot, but here goes. Mutiny opens with Cole Reed working as personal security for shipping tycoon Tibu Campallo (Ramon Tikaram) whose company favours “ethics over profits”. That company is about to be sold in a deal that Tibu hopes will help his son (Chaneil Kular) follow his own dreams.
Before that deal can go through, Cole and Tibu are ambushed on the way back from Tibu’s retirement party, with Cole unable to prevent his death. On the run, framed for Tibu’s murder, Cole sneaks onto the company’s Artemis cargo ship and not only discovers a link to those responsible, but also a dark secret onboard.
If you had any doubt that Mutiny was more in The Beekeeper vibe tonally than the more serious A Working Man, the fact that Cole gets onto the Artemis using another bald guy’s passport should put your mind at ease. Director Jean-François Richet – whose previous movie Plane could have starred Statham in a different life – knows that logic isn’t really necessary and that Statham movies are at their best when they’re self-aware.
Crucially, it never devolves into self-parody, but also nobody involved is treating Mutiny as a super-serious expose into child trafficking and how all big corporations are evil. Once the opening act is out of the way and all the players in place on the cargo ship, it just focuses on Jason Statham versus a bunch of bad guys, offing them in various creative ways.
Sky
Said ways include a neck-break via door, an axe to the head and a delightful knife-through-cheek move among many others, all of which are tailor-made for winces and whoops from a Friday night cinema crowd. Richet steadily keeps the set pieces coming over the first hour or so, before the final act is one extended set piece as Cole kills his way through the boat, which now includes some extra pirates, to get to the final boss.
It doesn’t really matter that the final boss in this case, the ship’s captain Marko (Roland Møller), is a fairly one-note villain who exists purely for Cole to kill later because the final fight is excellent. It also doesn’t really matter that Annabelle Wallis is lumbered with a thankless supporting character, fulfilling the ‘good person in the wrong place for Cole to protect’ role because she also gets to indulge in her inner Statham.
Criticism is essentially meaningless when it comes to the ‘Jason Statham gets revenge’ genre. You’ll know exactly where Mutiny goes from the moment Cole steps onto the ship and you could pick apart multiple elements, but where would the fun be in that? Mutiny knows what you want and delivers exactly what you want.
Do we want to see Jason Statham in something a bit different? Sure, but next year’s Jason Statham Stole My Bike should scratch that itch. For now, Mutiny has Jason Statham doing what Jason Statham does best, and that’s good enough for us.
Mutiny is released in cinemas on 21 August and on Sky Cinema later this year.
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Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.