Mutiny

Cool action hero name: Check. Tightly coreographed hand to hand combat in tightly constrained space: Check. Pause in the action to have someone read aloud action hero’s heroic but tragic backstory: Check. Holding on for dear life hanging by one hand: Check. Killing many bad guys with sounds of spurting blood and crunching bone: Check. Beautiful and plucky woman: Check. Saving the biggest of the bad guys for a final extended fight scene with many improvised and unusual but handily placed weapons: Check.

In other words, a very generic Jason Statham movie (he also produced), with a sprinkling of plot to allow us to catch our breath between many many many scenes of people being shot, punched, stabbed, and killed by various other means. Does it make sense? No. I mean, the title is just one word and even that isn’t accurate. At least the director’s previous film, “Plane,” was, actually pretty much about a plane and the various fights on and around it. Special props to the entire sound department for outstanding gunfire, crunching bones, neck-twisting cracks, and blood spatter.

Does that matter? Not to people who just want to see the 58- year-old action star take on the bad guys, which, spoiler alert, he still does extremely well.

The main character might just as well be named Jason Statham, but in this movie he is called Cole Reed, bodyguard to Tibu (Ramon Tikaram), a Thai billionaire, CEO of a vast shipping company that began with just one small boat. While Cole waits for Tibu in the lobby of a skyscraper we see how closely he observes every sound and movement around him.

Tibu and his son Kameron (Chaneil Kular) have just agreed to sell the shipping company. It is a bittersweet moment, but as Tibu explains, the company was his dream. His son Kameron wants him to sell and Tibu wants his son to be able to pursue his own dreams.

Cole is treated like a valued confidante and Tibu calls him part of the family. So we know that’s all about to end. Indeed, when Cole is driving Tibu home after the party celebrating the sale, they are ambushed and Tibu is killed, despite Cole’s best efforts, which include killing all of the attackers. The police are involved in the murder so they cannot be trusted. They blame Cole and have the media put out an alert that he is armed and dangerous.

Cole is determined to find and punish everyone responsible for the attack on Tibu. He grabs an American passport from one of the men he killed, and since they are both lean, bald, white men, that enables him to get on the ship with the people behind the murder, including the ship’s Dutch captain (Roland Moller as Marko).

A last-minute substitute has been added to the crew (Annabelle Wallis). She and Cole independently discover that the ship is transporting people who have been captured to be turned over to enslavers. Most of the rest of the film is different set-ups for fight scenes, which are excellent. Adrian Lester shows some gravitas as a canny US Navy captain who receives the brief distress call. A final scene veers from retribution into vigilantism, which might leave a sour tone. But no one is there for gravitas, canniness, or the fine points of restorative justice; just seeing Statham take on lots of scary bad guys, which he still does very well.

Parents should know that this is a very violent film with many bloody and graphic fight scenes and many characters injured and killed. Characters use strong language.

Family discussion: What will Cole do next? What will Kameron do next?

If you like this, try: “The Transporter” and “Hobbs and Shaw”