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.
You know things are going poorly when a 95-minute “action thriller” has you looking at your watch non-stop. “Mutiny” felt twice that long.
Jason Statham has built an entire career out of elevating disposable action movies through sheer charisma, physicality, and an uncanny ability to make even the silliest material entertaining. Unfortunately, even he can’t breathe life into “Mutiny,” an impossibly dull thriller that spends most of its mercifully brief runtime forgetting to include either action or thrills.
Statham plays Cole Reed (even his name is generic), a former Marine, then cop-turned-bodyguard who finds himself framed for the murder of his longtime friend and employer, who has just sold his shipping company. Reed sets out to clear his name, uncover the conspiracy behind the killing, and eliminate anyone standing in his way. It’s familiar territory for Statham, but familiarity isn’t necessarily a problem. The issue is that “Mutiny” does absolutely nothing interesting with its premise or the human trafficking conspiracy at its center.
The entire meandering plot and its painfully predictable twists take place aboard his late friend’s shipping vessel, the KMG Artemis. The action sequences are so few and far between that calling this an action movie feels like a misnomer. Worse, there’s not a single memorable villain, set-piece, character, or concept to distinguish “Mutiny” from the dozens of superior Statham vehicles already out there. Things finally come together for an admittedly exciting final 20 minutes, but this fails to make up for the tedium of the time that preceded it.
When the movie finally lets Statham off the leash, there are flashes of the brutal, no-nonsense kills his fans came to see. The finale delivers some satisfying action and desperately needed momentum, but by that point it’s too little, too late.
Every punch, one-liner, and kill feels like a cast-off from a better Statham movie. Why settle for Mutiny when The Beekeeper, Wrath of Man and the Transporter movies exist? At only 95 minutes, Mutiny somehow feels like two and a half hours. It’s a chore to watch and instantly forgettable.
In Theaters Friday, August 21st
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