OK, stop me if you’ve heard this one:
A script gets written as a sequel to a guy whose career has become all action films, but that sequel doesn’t get made. Instead, another guy gets that script, renames it, and makes a film that the first guy probably was alright with not doing.
The result? Mutiny.
Jean Francois Richet (who directed Plane, which is the other film I was referring to) directs Jason Statham in his latest story of a seemingly ordinary guy that has extraordinary fighting skills. This time, he is Cole Reed, the bodyguard for a shipping magnate who is on the verge of selling his company for a fortune. When he is murdered on his way home from a dinner celebrating the deal, he is gunned down and Reed is framed for the murder. Reed goes undercover on one of his ships and finds more than he bargained for, winding up in a fight for his life alongside a former member of the Navy in Angie Ellis (Annabelle Wallis).
To me, Statham works to the level of the script before him. Take 2023’s Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, where a clever script made him an absolute delight to watch, but the last two films I have seen him in (The Beekeeper and A Working Man) had much simpler concepts and it felt like he played to that level of story. Mutiny puts that streak at three; while it tries its hardest to bring the suspense more than the action, the balance is WAY off here. It’s almost the halfway mark before he truly gets into an action scene that got the audience’s attention (there is one that sets off the story, but it’s BRIEF), and until this film’s climax, it’s just a lot of both sides of the story trying to find each other. There needs to be less cat-and-mouse here and more fists-and-bullets, especially with a run time that barely clears ninety minutes. I understand filler time, but seriously. (Also, I had a hard time believing the captain of the ship was ONE YEAR YOUNGER THAN ME, according to a dossier.)
While there are much worse films I have seen this year (and also much worse Statham films I have bared witness to), this is not one that I can truly see as anything but forgettable. As we seem to be biding time until what is allegedly the Fast and the Furious finale that is rumored to start shooting in December, I hope we can get something a little more engaging from Stathan between now and then. He really IS a talented actor that can handle more than just films that could have been a Steven Seagal vehicle in the late ‘80s (or even a new film from Gerard Butler). This guy is AWESOME; give him better stuff to work with.