Mutiny is in theaters on August 21.
It’s rare for an already-compact movie to feel this overwrought. Even at a mere 95 minutes, the nautical Jason Statham starrer Mutiny plays like an unpolished assembly cut, with only a couple of slick or enjoyable action beats. Right from the in medias res opening, in which Statham’s bodyguard/former British marine Cole Reed recreates the actor’s fiery vehicular entrance in the Fast & Furious series — albeit with far less style and impact — something feels off, a sensation that carries through practically every moment.
Stationed in Bangkok, Reed’s job for the last five years has been to protect wealthy shipping magnate Tibu Campallo (Ramon Tikaram), as he and his son Kameron (Chaneil Kular) prepare to sell their empire. After a sentimental retirement party, where the benevolent billionaire gifts Reed a Rolex and welcomes him as family, the pair of them are ambushed by gunmen, and Tibu is killed. It takes a number of lethargic dialogue exchanges to get here, after which point you’d expect things to heat up as Reed tracks one of the hitmen to one of Tibu’s freighters leaving that night — but the film is slow and unsteady at every turn.
Reed’s maritime sleuthing is also complicated by the discovery of a shipping container filled with poor, malnourished Southeast Asian refugees, revealing a seedy side hustle operating without the knowledge of his late employer. Every international crewman seems involved, save for nondescript former U.S. naval officer Angie Ellis (Annabelle Wallis), with whom Reed teams up for a scattered, plotless and often directionless series of minor set pieces up and down the ship.
Directed by Jean-François Richet — whose jungle two-hander Plane was pretty competent — Mutiny makes for an awkward watch, where each subsequent scene feels both visually and orally overstated, as though every shot had to be stretched to fill out a prescribed runtime. It’s hard to be sure of what went wrong, but were it to come out that the production just didn’t have enough usable footage, this might not be surprising. Take, for instance, one minor but emblematic moment, during which a human trafficker looks up at a guard tower and radios to his comrades, “I’m going up there,” before the camera follows him walking over to the ladder at length and climbing every single rung until he reaches the top. Multiply this by several dozen exchanges, and you’re left waiting for things to happen more often than they actually do.
Statham, an otherwise capable action lead, ends up sleepwalking through his part as well, with nary a quip or powerful pose. There’s really nothing to Reed beyond what other people say about him — mostly, exposition delivered by a nearby U.S. navy vessel heroically patrolling the Indian Ocean, though don’t you dare consider the political implications of this in today’s Strait of Hormuz climate. Mutiny ain’t that kind of movie, kid, even though it fawns at the foot of power at every turn, showing reverence for both military might and benevolent billionaires who can’t be held accountable for the transgressions of their underlings. And yet, power is something Mutiny lacks aesthetically; few hits land with the kind of gut-crunching sound or snappy visual impact you pay for in this kind of movie.
There’s exactly one action beat early on that’s pretty neat, involving Reed fish-hooking a hoodlum with a giant padlock, but Mutiny spends the rest of its runtime trying and failing to chase that high. As the aforementioned refugees all but disappear from the story, Reed and Ellis traipse up and down identical stairwells, repeatedly evading and engaging in gunfire exchanges while the movie spins its wheels, waiting for the nearby U.S. Navy to arrive and do nothing of note. (Shout out to the one hilariously swole Naval extra who gets to throw exactly zero punches.)
The ship is, theoretically, a character unto itself, but its geography is left so vague and indistinct that shots don’t often fit together. You might find yourself struggling to get a handle on who’s looking or standing where, as the movie cuts for the umpteenth time between identical, gruff characters obscured by shadow. It’s visual soup with no emotional core, and with very few visceral thrills to speak of, which is especially disappointing for a movie filled with this many guns, blades, and other objects that could be used as inventive weaponry. Instead, what we’re left with is a cavalcade of cartoonish bad guys meeting uninspired ends, courtesy of heroes whose only virtue is their former military background, in an environment that should be way more exciting. But alas: from deck to galley, Mutiny is a tremendous bore.
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