Cruising for a bruising
Summary
Mutiny is a little disappointing as there is nothing that really stands out in terms of characters or action; it is elevated by some awesome kills and a great bad guy death but I miss movies with one-liners and larger than life characters. This is still an entertaining and brisk ride, but you can wait for streaming.
Plot: After his billionaire industrialist boss is murdered in front of him, Cole Reed is set up to take the fall for the crime — leaving him on the run as he works to uncover an international conspiracy.
Review: Mutiny has been one of my most anticipated action movies of the year as with a Jason Statham movie you usually know exactly what to expect. There are bad guys, Jason Statham is the good guy and he kills said bad guys. That is basically Mutiny as well, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little disappointed.
The trailers made it look like it was going to be a real surge of adrenaline with wall to wall action and graphic kills. It does at least deliver on the bodycount with some inventive and satisfying bad guy deaths. I cheered when the main villain got his comeuppance, but the problem was there was nothing that really stood out. The characters were all bland and generic, there were no one-liners or humour and the villains were just human traffickers which Statham already dealt with in A Working Man. Don’t get me wrong, I will always enjoy watching traffickers getting killed as they are the lowest forms of life, but I think as villains it has been done to death.
I also wanted a bit more hand to hand combat; we get a couple of fights, the contained location of the ship was cool and like I said the final showdown delivers, but after watching something like The Furious (which also dealt with traffickers) I kinda wanted more from this. It is still relatively fast paced and at around 90 minutes it’s an easy watch and I’ll still pick it up on 4K, but you can probably wait for streaming here.
I liked Annabelle Wallis who felt believable and not some invincible girl boss making her one of the few characters that stood out. It was also cool to see Lee Charles have a brief throwdown with The Stath.
They need to get back to larger than life characters with big personalities and the sense of fun we used to get, but like I said this is still entertaining enough.
Overall, I expected more from Mutiny as I loved Plane which director Jean-François Richet had previously helmed and I will always support a new Statham movie, but it was just a bit bland with no memorable characters and is only elevated by some imaginative kills and a few decent if not spectacular action scenes.