It’s Jason Statham on a boat.
Jason Statham is a national treasure.
In a modern cinematic wasteland where cheesy one-liners, greased-up biceps, and absurdly over-the-top brawl scenes have mostly gone the way of the dodo, J-Stats is still out here cranking out flick after flick well into his late 50s. It’s pretty much always the same recipe: the mystery-man swagger, the gravelly grunts, beating a dozen bad guys to a pulp, and dropping a perfectly timed quip before the credits roll. God bless the man. Watching his movies takes me right back to being a kid in the prime era of action cinema, grinning ear to ear with a box of popcorn.
J-Stats as Cole Reed in My Gun Gets Bigger in Every Scene.
In Mutiny, Cole Reed (Stats) is a former Royal Marine and Iraq War veteran who turned London police officer before walking away from the force over “political reasons.” Now, he’s running high-stakes private security for shipping container tycoon Tibu Campallo (Ramon Tikaram, Fackham Hall). Tibu isn’t your typical corporate slimeball; he’s a self-made billionaire with a heart of gold who treats Reed more like a brother than a hired gun.
Naturally, disaster strikes on the very night Tibu plans to sell his company, KMG. Tibu gets assassinated, and Reed is framed for the hit. In the middle of a chaotic shootout, Reed kills a lookalike assassin, swipes his ID, and hitches a ride on a cargo ship loaded with KMG containers, figuring out a way to clear his name. Enter Angie Ellis (Annabelle Wallis, Mercy), a struggling single mom and ex-Naval officer who gets a last-minute call to serve as third mate. While laying low, Reed makes a horrifying discovery: KMG’s cargo containers are secretly being used for human trafficking. Armed with basic first aid, water, and pure grit, Reed tries to help the victims, only for Ellis to stumble upon the horrific operation during her rounds. She reports it straight to Captain Marko Madsen (Roland Møller, Citadel), who pretends to be outraged—until the mask slips. Turns out Madsen and his gang of generic, gun-toting muscle-heads are deep in the loop, lining their pockets off human misery. Was Tibu involved? How much did he know? Will we find out or will Reed’s fists do all the talking?
Now, look: I’d be lying if I said this plot kicked ass. But that’s the absolute beauty of a J-Stats jam. Every five years or so, he drops a legitimate masterpiece of tension and storytelling like Wrath of Man (2021), and the rest of his filmography is pure, unadulterated, wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am knuckle-busting carnage. Every punch in Mutiny lands like Indiana Jones’s thunderous right hook, and the knife fights are executed like a butcher carving a Thanksgiving turkey. To top it off, the camera framing makes every firearm look roughly the size of a cannon. It’s glorious, brain-off fun!
If you’ve read my reviews before, you’ve heard me say that Statham needs a moment in every movie where he looks right into the camera or at the bad guy and says, “That’s right: I’m …” or “That’s right: This is …” and names the movie. “That’s right, I’m The Transporter,” or “That’s right: We’re in Meg 2: The Trench.” If this isn’t money on the table, then I don’t know what is. Ever since his breakout as Bacon in 1998’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, every single one of his titles has been ripe for this treatment. Mutiny missed the ultimate home run here!
They just get bigger as the movie goes on.
Do you care about spoilers? Of course you don’t. At the climax, Reed corners the mastermind behind Tibu’s death. The villain, bruised and desperate, asks what he wants. That was the PERFECT moment for J-Stats to look him dead in the eye and say, “That’s right: This is Mutiny.” The line he uses is OK, but c’mon. Is that really too much to ask for? I think it would be a miss if I didn’t mention that Mutiny was originally supposed to be a sequel to Gerard Butler’s Plane, originally titled Ship. So … there you go. I didn’t think much of it, but thought it was worth a mention.
Go check it out if you want a fun, action-packed thrill ride. Allow your brain some time to jump ship.
Mutiny is now playing in theaters
Directed by Jean-François Richet
Written by Lindsay Michel and J.P. Davis
Starring: Jason Statham, Annabelle Wallis, Roland Møller
Genre: Action Adventure
Runtime: 95 mins
Leave a comment