MUTINY Review: Statham Hews to Formula in Human Trafficking Thriller

After years mired in aging franchises, Jason Statham has returned to the solid B-movies that established his career. Almost interchangeable, his recent films have tended to rework themes from his earlier hits.

Mutiny falls on a serious side of his filmography. A long, leisurely opening looks at what could have happened to Transporter's Frank Martin a couple of decades on. Once the film gets underway, it boasts a good cast and a premise that's a few twists away from Under Siege.

This time, Statham is Cole Reed, a former Royal Marine and cop still shaken by the death of his father, for which he feels responsible. Now a bodyguard, he's ambushed while driving the head of KMG, a Bangkok-based shipping conglomerate. Reed escapes but is blamed for his boss' death.

Assuming one of the assassins' identities, Reed boards the Artemis, a KMG freighter. Searching the ship, he finds a cargo container filled with enslaved immigrants about to be trafficked.

Coincidentally, Angie Ellis (Annabelle Wallis) has just been assigned as Artemis Third Mate under Captain Marko Madsen (Roland Møller). She discovers the immigrants right after Reed, making them both targets of Madsen's crew of killers.

The enormous Artemis is an excellent setting for Mutiny. Dark corridors, stairways, ladders, chutes, ducts, and cargo containers abound. Nowhere is safe, not with 20 killers gunning for Reed and Ellis,  not to mention a boarding party ready to transfer the immigrants to their new owners.

The fights are inventive and satisfying. Statham's past the days of working with action maestros like Corey Yuen (RIP). The stunts here (under fight coordinators Laurent Buson and Godefroy Ryckewaert) are shorter, bloodier, and more weapon-oriented. They are also extremely effective, with retribution delivered by gun, knife, grappling hook, speargun, glass shard, neck snap, iron door, and dead fall.

One especially good fight takes place on a free-swinging gangplank that periodically smashes into the side of the Artemis, Reed armed with a knife facing Madsen wielding an axe.

Director Jean-François Richet's last film was the bone-headed Plane, a Gerard Butler thriller as generic as its name. But he's also worked on pretty good Ethan Hawke and Mel Gibson vehicles, and he knows how to deliver action. Once it gets going, Mutiny rarely flags, using a couple of parallel storylines to build tension.

Let's be honest, fleshing out Statham's characters is not going to matter to most viewers. They don't care that he plays chess or gets Rolexes from his clients, nor whether or not Ellis has a daughter or that a rich supervillain is behind the trafficking. Viewers want maximum carnage with a high body count.

Mutiny gives just that, without the meta-irony of The Beekeeper or the idiotic stunts of A Working Man or the revised Safe that was Shelter. Statham just keeps pounding away, better than just about all his contemporaries.

The film opens Friday, August 21, via Lionsgate. Visit the official site for locations and showtimes.