‘Mutiny’ Review: Jason Statham Takes the ‘Die Hard’ Formula to a Cargo Ship

If actors could be considered the auteurs of their own films, you could reasonably argue that this is a Jason Statham movie. And in a way, Mutiny is exactly that. Not because he directed it or anything of the sort, but because having him on board as a producer is at least a mild guarantee that the film has its star’s stamp of approval, whatever that may actually mean. The truth is that this Die Hard-style thriller set aboard a cargo ship is the closest the British actor has come, over the course of his career, to positioning himself as Bruce Willis’s heir.

The story weaves together corporate intrigue, police corruption, and even a touch of social commentary into a plot that’s more convoluted than it really needs to be, so let’s keep it brief. Statham plays Cole Reed, the bodyguard of a Thai shipping magnate who owns a fleet of cargo vessels. His boss, Tibu Campallo (Ramon Tikaram), is in the middle of selling the company when, after leaving a public event, the car carrying the two men is ambushed and Campallo is murdered. Cole soon discovers that the police are involved in the killing and that one of the conspirators planned to flee aboard one of the company’s ships. Conveniently, Reed happens to look a lot like him, so he assumes the man’s identity and sneaks aboard the vessel in question —the Artemis— to avenge his employer. At the same time, the police pin the murder on Cole himself, forcing him to avoid detection while trying to uncover the truth.

And so, my friends, we’re on the ship, where Reed, as a stowaway, has to figure out who killed his boss and get his revenge. Before long he discovers that some very shady business is taking place onboard —business that almost certainly ties back to the murder— and he also runs into an unexpected ally, and potential complication, in Angie (Annabelle Wallis), a company representative completely unaware of the criminal operations being run in secret. Rather than functioning as an equal partner, Angie falls into the more traditional role of «damsel in distress,» creating even more problems for Cole to solve. Add to that the possibility of another vessel —whether pirates or a naval patrol— closing in, plus the ship’s stern and permanently irritated captain, Marko (Roland Møller), who looks like an especially aggressive former center back for the Danish national soccer team.

All of this sets the stage for a cat-and-mouse chase through the ship’s towering stacks of containers and labyrinthine compartments. Mutiny saves most of its action for the final stretch, and when it arrives it’s refreshingly concise, efficient, and brutal. Bones snap, flesh gets sliced open by the kind of industrial equipment you’d actually find aboard a cargo ship. There are no extended John Wick-style fight sequences and very little gunplay. Instead, the French director of Plane and the 2005 remake of John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 opts for an unapologetically old-school approach to action: hide, wait, strike when your opponent least expects it. Despite the passage of time and the countless variations the genre has produced, the formula still works —especially when there are plenty of nooks and crannies to disappear into.

As has become the norm in his recent films, Statham plays an honorable man with a good heart and a righteous cause, even if pursuing that cause requires resorting to the most savage violence imaginable. When women and children are at risk, it seems, anything goes. Cole is a textbook example of that code. What Statham doesn’t fully exploit here, though, is his sense of humor. He’s an actor who can be genuinely funny thanks to his bone-dry delivery, but he rarely taps into that side of his persona, preferring instead to lean into the brooding avenger. If he really wants to cement himself as Bruce Willis’s true successor, he’ll need to embrace that side of his personality a little more. If the goal is to go old school, there’s always room for a well-timed one-liner.