Mutiny

From the writer (J.P. Davis) and director (Jean-François Richet) of Plane, this action-thriller is reported to have begun life as a sequel to that 2023 Gerard Butler vehicle. It was entitled, naturally, ‘Ship’, but retooled after Butler, well, jumped ship, thus clearing the way for Jason Statham to board a movie that might be described as Die Hard On A Boat, had Under Siege not got there already. Thirty-four years ago.

Mutiny is a throwback, the kind of contained, no-nonsense action picture that Hollywood thrived on before CGI made anything possible… except, in most cases, realism and peril. Statham has previously played getaway drivers, bank robbers, cops, hitmen, construction workers and a beekeeper, but nearly all of his tough guys are ex-somethings, and so it is here. In fact, bodyguard Cole Reed is doubly hard because he’s an ex-cop and an ex-Royal Marine (“I pissed off the wrong people”). He’s also a master strategist, always three moves ahead. We know this because, early doors, he wins a game of chess without so much as a stroke of his perma-stubbled chin. As particular sets of skills go, his are particularly particular, so who better to creep through the dingy hull and cranking air vents of the KMG Artemis in an effort to learn how the captain and crew are involved in the murder of Cole’s shipping tycoon boss, Tibu (Ramon Tikaram)?

Dealing death dressed in denim, Reed fights at close quarters, brief and brutal. His fists are hard and heavy as anchors, and he makes violent use of whatever objects are at hand — hook, padlock, harpoon — with nary a quip. “I wonder how many steaks I could make out of you?” the Stath mused in Crank; “Do I look like a man who came halfway across Europe to die on a bridge?” he snarled in Transporter 3. In Mutiny, he simply takes care of brutal business and there’s nothing fun about it, the tone prescribed by a grim plot-turn that’s only surprising in that Statham should choose to cover such similar ground to his last movie, A Working Man.

Viewers will probably have more fun than Reed does, but only just. For while Mutiny’s adherence to back-to-basic, crunchy action is to be applauded, it often drags between fight sequences, with neither the conspiracy thread nor the characters, most of whom are disposable goons, engaging heart or mind. Even Reed teaming up with the third mate (Annabelle Wallis) only brings a dynamic that chugs like the boat’s engine. What’s odd is that Mutiny begins with a Leone-style close-up of Statham’s narrowed eyes, but any stylisation ends there. The next 90 minutes are all breezeblock-grey visuals, and a climactic scrap between a literal boatload of Marines, pirates, ex-military and ex-mercenary henchmen never threatens to be anything more than solid.