Mutiny

Mutiny is a decent Jason Statham vehicle that spends too long explaining why it is a Jason Statham vehicle. Jean-François Richet has a cargo ship, a reliable action lead and 95 minutes in which to put them to use. Once the fighting takes over, the film is brisk, rough and easy to follow. Getting there requires more patience with corporate espionage and betrayal than the eventual simplicity of the action can justify.

Statham plays Cole Reed with the blunt assurance this sort of film needs, and Richet is sensible enough to make his physical performance the main attraction. The pleasure is in watching someone who can make a confined fight feel forceful without making it hard to read. We winced at the bloody close-quarters violence, then felt slightly sheepish about how much we were enjoying it. The staging gives those impacts weight, while the absurdity keeps the punishment from becoming an ordeal.

Brendan Galvin’s cinematography helps keep the fighting intelligible in a setting that could easily become a succession of anonymous scuffles. Russell De Rozario’s production design gives the cargo ship the cramped, unwelcoming character the action requires, although the setting is more interesting than most of the people occupying it. Richet makes useful work of restricted space rather than continually trying to disguise it. The fights feel tailored to the location, which is enough to give familiar material some life.

Editors Joe Rosenbloom and David Rosenbloom are more successful at keeping individual fights economical than at making the whole film feel equally lean. The opening spends too much time establishing business intrigue whose details offer little pleasure in themselves. Marcus Trumpp’s music gives the action a welcome push, helping maintain momentum when the story has little left to contribute. At 95 minutes, this should feel spare throughout; instead, the uneven pace makes the early passages feel longer than they need to.

Lindsay Michel and J.P. Davis’s screenplay is least convincing when it needs to give anyone besides Reed a reason to hold our attention. Annabelle Wallis, as Angie Ellis, and Roland Møller, as Captain Marko Madsen, have too little help from the writing. The supporting characters function well enough as participants in a thriller, but they offer few reasons to care which way a conversation goes. That is a significant weakness in a story that keeps asking us to wait for its next physical confrontation.

A confined-space action thriller need not be original at every turn; a familiar situation can still produce suspense if the people and the place are sufficiently engaging. Mutiny gets enough from its ship and its star to remain watchable despite the weak writing. Richet also resists the temptation to turn a straightforward revenge story into something grander. Choose it for Statham and the compact brawls. Expect the conversations to require more patience.