Jason Statham has proven himself a superb action hero for almost three decades in films like THE TRANSPORTER series, CRANK, and THE MECHANIC. He’s also shown a sense of comedy in most of those films and been outright hilarious in comedies like LOCK, STOCK & TWO SMOKING BARRELS and SNATCH. Statham even sent up his own image in the spoof SPY, giving Melissa McCarthy and Rose Byrne a run for their money for laughs per scene. The superstar is even self-aware enough to laugh uproariously at a comic like Godfrey taking the piss out of him with his uncanny impression. (http://(https://www.youtube.com/shorts/GStT11eksmg)
But is Jason Statham self-aware enough to know that even his action thrillers these days are packed with more laughs than most comedies? I hope so because his latest adventure opening this weekend, entitled MUTINY, had me laughing more than THE INVITE or JACKASS: BEST AND LAST did this year. That’s not to say that MUTINY doesn’t contain some potent drama and invigorating action sequences, but the laughs in the film are substantial, intentional or not. And God love Statham for being such a good sport amongst it all.
In MUTINY, Statham plays a retired British cop named Cole Reed now working security in Singapore for a billionaire shipping industrialist. His boss is murdered in front of him, and Reed is set up to take the fall, so the smart hero escapes and becomes a stowaway on one of his boss’s tankers to try to figure out who is behind all the malfeasance.
Up to this point, the film plays fairly straight, and it does so effectively in the first 20 minutes. But once Reed gets the lay of the land, er, sea, the action becomes non-stop, and dare I say, more and more hilarious with each sequence that Reed takes out a batch of baddies. Along the way, he and an intrepid, ethical shipmate named Angie (a game Annabelle Wallis) join forces to figure out what’s going on and find all kinds of inventive ways to stop the baddies led by Roland Moller’s evil captain. From fisticuffs to ropes to knives to machine guns, these two are nothing if not inventive in how they dispatch one man after another. And the overkill becomes overtly hilarious.
The film runs only 95 minutes, and it’s quite economical, save for a subplot involving a curious American warship, headed up by a droll Adrian Lester. He blithely wonders about some of the chaos their intel is picking up regarding the Singapore tanker, and his scene induces laughs too. Kudos to director Jean-Francois Richet and cinematographer Brendan Galvin for shooting on location aboard a real tanker, and to all the stunt folks, including Statham and Wallis, for performing all the action with such vigor.
I’m not sure if the screenwriters Lindsay Michael and J.P. Davis planned for as many laughs as the film will get, but it’s hard not to chuckle when Reed conveniently happens upon a fire ax on a nearby wall, and a harpoon that just happens to be scattered amongst other debris in a corner of the ship. Such moments, helping Reed continue to effusive bloodletting, feel more like moments from THE NAKED GUN than DIE HARD, but Statham plays such moments straight, and that makes them all the more amusing.
It’s funny too, because in 2007, Statham made a superior heist thriller called THE BANK JOB that was based on a true crime story from the UK. He played a car salesman in the 1970s whose criminal contacts get him roped into a bank robbery. Statham gave a wonderfully nuanced performance, proving he could play regular Joes and still keep an audience enthralled. (It was a big international hit, critically and box-office-wise.) I still think Statham could and should do more roles like that, but at least in his big action pictures, rest assured he delivers the goods.
Including plenty of laughs, intentional or not.
(NOTE: I’m using a caricature of Statham that I drew 15 years ago to accompany this review because the star still looks almost exactly the same today. Amazing, considering he’s now 59 and running around in MUTINY like a man half his age. We should all be so fortunate.)
