MUTINY : Tuesday 25th August 2026

I saw the MA15+ Rated 'MUTINY' earlier this week at my local Multiplex, and this UK and US Co-Produced action thriller film is Directed by Jean-Francois Richet, whose previous feature film making credits take in his debut with 'Inner City' in 1995, and which he would follow up with the likes of 'Assault on Precinct 13' in 2005, 'Blood Father' in 2016, 'The Emperor of Paris' in 2018 and 'Plane' in 2023. This film was released in the US and the UK last week too, has so far recovered US$17M from its production budget of US$40M and has garnered mixed or average critical reviews. 

The film opens in Bangkok and we are introduced to Cole Reed (Jason Statham, who also Co-Produces here) who is a former English Police Officer and Commando now working for the past five years as bodyguard for billionaire shipping magnate and CEO of cargo shipping company KMG, Tibu Campallo (Ramon Tikaram). 

One evening after playing a game of chess with Tibu at his palatial Bangkok residence, Reed and Tibu go on a drive before being ambushed. Reed kills all the attackers, but Tibu dies from a stray gunshot on the backseat of his car, and with his dying words Tibu's tasks Reed with taking care of his son, Kameron (Chaneil Kular). Reed is instantly framed for Tibu's murder.

After learning that Tibu's assassins will be boarding a cargo ship named Artemis due to leave the port at midnight that same night, Reed assumes the identity of a dead assassin and secrets himself aboard the ship. Reed encounters another KMG employee named Angie Ellis (Annabelle Wallis), who was summoned to the ship last minute to replace the assassin Reed assumed the identity of. Once the ship is out to sea, Reed starts to covertly inspect the ship, discovering a container on the lower deck filled with the victims of a human trafficking operation. He explains that he will get water, food and medical supplies for the victims and tells them to wait. Angie who has heard Reed from an upper deck goes to investigate and also comes across the same container. She releases the victims and reports to the Captain of the Artemis Marko Madsen (Roland Moller). 

Reed frees the hostages and leads them to a life boat, before killing a crew member who attacks him after finding the hostages escaping. After discovering that the crew is complicit in the trafficking, Angie sends out a distress signal from the ship that is intercepted by the US Coast Guard before being shot in the shoulder and subdued. The hostages are recaptured.

Reed realises that the ship's Captain takes orders from Jaran Daniles (Simon Kluth), the person responsible for ordering Tibu's assassination, and that they had Tibu killed to delay the sale of KMG, and to have Kameron sell the company to them. Meanwhile, Reed and Angie have teamed up, with Reed extracting the bullet from Angie's shoulder down in the engine room, and dressing the wound. 

After killing most of the crew in a hail of bullets and close quarter knife play, Reed fights with Marko and kills him by shooting him through the head with a harpoon gun. The Coast Guard arrive at the ship's coordinates after Captain Adam Spencer (Adrian Lester) deduced that something wasn't quite right with the intelligence he was being given by the Artemis' Captain, and having his own men research the Artemis crew, and Cole Reed. 

They surround Reed, believing he is responsible for Tibu's death but are stopped by Angie, who lies that Reed died on the ship and that his body was thrown overboard. Angie leaves to return to her six year old daughter in the US while Reed, no longer on the run due to being declared dead, returns to Thailand in a motorboat to find and kill Daniles.

At Tibu's funeral, Reed confronts Kameron, who claims he was used by Daniles and the human traffickers and that they attempted to pressure him into selling KMG to them. Reed reprimands Kameron, saying that he should have informed him of his situation, and that Kameron will have to live with the knowledge for the rest of his life that his carelessness caused his father's death. Reed leaves to find Daniles.

Later, at night Reed intercepts a car with Daniles inside, crashes into it sending it flipping end over end before coming to rest right side up. He kills the driver, and interrogates Daniles. Daniles reveals that Tibu's death gave the company to Kameron, and that he planned on having Kameron sell KMG to him so he could inherit the company's wealth and assets. Daniles attempts to bribe Reed in exchange for having his life spared, saying 'what do you want' but Reed smashes his head into the car and shoots him dead with a bullet to the head, and avenging Tibu just as he responded 'vengeance' before walking away.

With 'Mutiny' you know exactly what you're in for the moment you purchase your movie ticket. Jason Statham does what he does best with his fists and his legs and the available hardware at his disposal, and on that level the action sequences and the close quarter combat scenes don't disappoint. That said, this film doesn't offer us anything new that we haven't already seen before, and is best summed up as 'Die Hard on a Cargo Ship', offering up mindless, albeit serviceable B-movie style entertainment, while proving that the Stath still has what it takes in the butt kicking creative kills department. You can easily however, save yourself the price of your cinema ticket and wait a few weeks to catch this film on your streaming service of choice. 

'Mutiny' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps. 

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS : HONOUR AMONG THIEVES - Tuesday 4th April 2023.

I saw the M Rated 'DUNGEONS & DRAGONS : HONOUR AMONG THIEVES' this week, and this American fantasy heist action comedy film is Directed and Co-Written by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, based on the tabletop role-playing game 'Dungeons & Dragons'. This film bears no connection to the original trilogy of films that launched with the feature film 'Dungeons & Dragons' in 2000, then the made for TV 'Dungeons & Dragons : Wrath of the Dragon God' in 2005 and the direct to video third film 'Dungeons & Dragons 3 : The Book of Vile Darkness' in 2012. The film was originally set to be released on 23rd July 2021 but due to scheduling conflicts, the COVID-19 pandemic, and various other studio delays a release date of two weeks ago in the US and last week in Australia was finally set upon, having seen its World Premier screening at SXSW earlier in March. It has garnered positive critical reviews, and cost US$150M to produce, and has so far grossed US$83M in Box Office receipts.

The film opens up in Revel's End arctic prison where Bard Edgin Darvis (Chris Pine) and his barbarian accomplice Holga Kilgore (Michelle Rodriguez) have been holed up for the past two years. Edgin stands before a panel of three judges explaining his back story and the reasons why he and Holga should be pardoned for their past crimes and released. Edgin spent years as a member of the Harpers, an order of peacekeepers, until a Red Wizard he had antagonised killed his wife. Accompanied by Holga, Edgin attempted to make a new life for himself and his daughter Kira (Chloe Coleman) by turning to theft, teaming with amateur sorcerer Simon Aumar (Justice Smith) and rogue Forge Fitzwilliam (Hugh Grant), along with the latter's mysterious acquaintance, Sofina (Daisy Head). While robbing a Harper stronghold, Edgin attempted to steal a 'Tablet of Reawakening' to bring his wife back to life, but he and Holga were captured, while their accomplices escaped with the Tablet.

We then come back to Edgin's plea for release, as he and Holga manage to escape from the prison by clinging onto a human sized bird, Chancellor Jarnathan (Clayton Grover), as he smashes through a window high up in the prison tower and glides the pair some distance away to safety as Chancellor Anderton (Nicholas Blane) cries after them that he had approved their release. And so the pair escape to Neverwinter and learn that Forge has become Lord there, after its prior Lord was stricken down by some mysterious illness. Forge has been taking care of Kira during the last two years, and has convinced her that Edgin's greed and selfishness led to his imprisonment. Sofina is revealed to be a Red Wizard, and she and Forge deliberately orchestrated the capture of Edgin and Holga.

Sofina tries, unsuccessfully, to dispense with Edgin and Holga, but they escape and decide to rob Forge's vault and bring Kira home with them during the upcoming High Sun Games at the stadium, needing the Tablet to prove their innocence. The gladiatorial games had previously been banned, but Forge resurrected them, promising the locals that the games would bring in tourists and money, and it's what the people want anyhow. Edgin and Holga track down Simon to help and he suggests also recruiting Doric (Sophia Lillis), a druid, whose forest community is battling against the forced logging handed down by Forge.

Doric gains access to Forge's castle by shapeshifting into various animal forms and finds the vault has magical defences which Simon says he lacks power to disable. Simon suggests that a magic relic, 'The Helm of Disjunction' could disable them. They travel to an old graveyard to ask Holga's ancestors where to find it. Simon resurrects the dead with a talisman long enough for them to answer five questions, with the corpses revealing they gave the Helm to Xenk Yandar (Rege-Jean Page), a paladin who fled his country, Thay, when Red Wizards turned his people into an army of the undead.

After getting to know each other Xenk, forces Edgin to swear to distribute any gained treasures to the people, leads the group through a vast subterranean network of tunnels and caverns known as the Underdark where the Helm has been secretly stashed away. With the help of a teleportation staff obtained from Holga's halfling ex-husband Marlamin (Bradley Cooper), they find the relic, but are attacked by Thayan assassins ordered by Sofina. Xenk fights off the assassins and helps the group escape from an overweight and less than agile red dragon, before exiting.

Simon is unable to master the Helm's power, so they decide to use the teleportation staff to enter the vault during the games. Simon and Holga are able to enter the magically-sealed door after Simon is able to master the Helm's power, but find the room behind it empty except for a magical trap. The whole group is captured and instead of death on the spot choose to participate in the games, but are able to escape after successfully negotiating several challenges and obstacles. Doric discovers that Forge has loaded the treasure onto a boat and is preparing to flee, so the group steals the boat for themselves and rescues Kira from Forge, who threatened Kira's life.

About a mile out to sea, the group realise that Sofina organised the games to draw a massive crowd and turn them into an army of the undead using the same curse that destroyed Thay. The group returns and transports Forge's stolen riches out of the boat with the teleportation staff and scatters them across the city, as Edgin had promised Xenk, so drawing the people out of the stadium before Sofina's spell can take effect.

Angered by her defeat, Sofina attacks the group, but Simon is able to master his magic and reverse Sofina's time-stop spell, allowing Kira to use an invisibility pendant Edgin and Holga had given her as a child to place an anti-magic bracelet on Sofina. Sofina is subsequently killed when attacked by Doric in her shapeshifting owlbear form and is then crushed by falling rubble from a building she was slammed into. However, Holga is fatally injured in the battle and dies in Kira's arms with Edgin looking on. Edgin uses the Tablet (which can only be used once) to bring her back to life, as he accepts that he wanted to bring back his wife only for his own sake while Holga had become a true part of their family. Now fully recovered from his mystery illness, the old Lord of Neverwinter declares the team heroes of the realm and Forge is sent to Revel's End, where he is seen one year into his sentence pleading with the Chancellor's for his early release, which they reject. 

'Dungeons & Dragons : Honour Among Thieves' is an OK movie, but that's as far as I would go with my praise for this fantasy action comedy offering. I didn't love it and I also didn't hate it either. It's a very simple story that unfolds well enough, but it's also quite silly in places and at times it meanders along at a snails pace before lurching into the next action set piece with barely any real impact on the storyline other than padding. Chris Pine is on good form here as the charming happy-go-lucky bard Edgin; as is Michelle Rodriquez as the type cast tough-as-nails ass-kicking heroine; with more than admirable turns from Justice Smith, Rege-Jean Page, Sophie Lillis and Hugh Grant to round out the principle cast and who all bring a not too serious light hearted tone to the picture, although I'm not sure I would rush out to see further instalments should this become a franchise.

'Dungeons & Dragons : Honour Among Thieves' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

THE GENTLEMEN : Tuesday 7th January 2020.

I saw the MA15+ Rated 'THE GENTLEMEN' this week from British Director, Producer and Screenwriter Guy Ritchie. He is no stranger to the British crime drama often tinged with a hint of tongue firmly planted in cheek comedy, a la 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels', 'Snatch', 'Revolver' and 'RocknRolla' which have helped propel its emerging stars into mainstream success - including Jason Statham, Tom Hardy, Idris Elba and Vinnie Jones. Here Guy Ritchie, is going back to his London gangland genre roots with his latest crime comedy offering that he Directs, Co-Produces, wrote the Screenplay for and also came up with the story with Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies. The film was released in the UK last week too, and not in the US until the back end of January, and has so far taken US$8M at the Box Office, and judging by the packed cinema theatre I attended this week, it looks like this is a winner!

Our film opens up with American expat Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey) alighting from his chauffeur driven car and walking into a London pub, in what looks like pre-opening time, and orders from the barman a pint of London's finest Gritchie (get it!) ale and a pickled egg. He sits down at a table in the empty pub and calls his wife, saying that's its steak night, dinner later that evening at The River Cafe at 9:00pm, at which point an unknown gunman enters the room unheard, and shoots at Mickey. Cut to the red crimson stuff plastering the table and the pint glass in front of him. Roll the title credits and you could easily be mistaken for thinking that you are watching the latest James Bond offering, as Ritchie here has copied to good effect from the Bond play book.

We then enter the home of Raymond (Charlie Hunnam), Mickey's consigliere and right hand man, and as Raymond prepares to settle in for the night, his peace is disturbed by Fletcher (Hugh Grant) lurking in the shadows in wait. Fletcher is a sleazy tabloid newspaper investigative journalist who has been doing a lot of digging into Mickey's history, his business exploits and his connections and its through an extended interview with Raymond that we learn of Mickey's business empire. Fletcher works for Big Dave (Eddie Marsan), the Editor at the newspaper, who has an axe to grind with Mickey for disrespecting him at a lavish gathering in front of various movers, shakers and high powered associates of his.

And so Fletcher begins to recount everything he knows of Mickey's exploits as though he's prepping a movie script, and in fact he has written one based on what he has come to know of Mickey. And so we learn that Mickey hailed from a dead end family in the US, but despite his less than humble upbringing he gained a scholarship to Oxford University. There he quickly learned that there was a demand amongst the student population for weed, skank, sweet Mary Jane, ganga - marijuana. As his university business began to flourish, so he broadened his horizons and ultimately grew his business but not without getting blood on his hands and taking out those who would oppose him, stand in his way, or try to muscle in on his action. And now after thirty years at the top of England's marijuana supply game, Mickey has decided it's time to retire. Fletcher thinks he's been incredibly cunning and thorough in his investigations and unfurls all of his collected intelligence to Raymond, seeking £20M to keep quiet and ride off into the sunset never to be heard from again. Needless to say Raymond is fiercely loyal to Mickey, and sits intently listening to what Fletcher has to say, occasionally chipping in to neither confirm nor deny the allegations being made, but asking for clarification or responding to a direct line of questioning.

Wanting therefore to liquidate his weed farm empire which is concealed very cleverly within twelve stately homes of the well off and not so well off landed British gentry, spread across the length and breadth of the land, there are two very interested parties circling. Those interested parties are specifically Jewish American billionaire Matthew Berger (Jeremy Strong) and young pretender Chinese mobster 'Dry-Eye' (Henry Golding).

Mickey is in favour of selling his business to Matthew and has no time for the Chinese upstart Dry Eye, and so he takes Matthew on a tour of one of his weed facilities buried somewhere in the remote English countryside under the grounds of a stately residence for which Mickey pays the owner of the property £1M annually. Mickey announces to Matthew that he is looking to sell his business for £400M in total including his network of European connections, his distribution channels and the whole caboodle. Matthew doesn't baulk at that figure, when Mickey tells him that ten years from now the business will be worth half a trillion!

Later Dry-Eye pays an uninvited visit on Mickey and states in no uncertain terms that he wishes to buy the business and taps out an undisclosed sum on his smart phone. To which Mickey retorts that his business is not for sale, the sum quoted is an insult anyway, and he should leave as he's busy. Dry Eye persists saying that its a very good offer as Mickey grows increasingly impatient, and is ultimately shown the door, through which Dry Eye exits with one of his henchmen, none too pleased at the dismissal.

One evening under cover of darkness, Mickey's farm that he had previously shown to Matthew is raided by five beefed up tracksuit wearing youths who do their very best to beat up and overpower several of Mickey's more sturdy, yet older workers, and rob Mickey of many of his marijuana plants. The lads in question all record this and live stream it over the Internet, and in no time, Mickey, Raymond and Mickey's wife Rosalind (Michelle Dockery) are witnesses to the robbery and the beatings unfolding before their very eyes from the comfort of a sofa far away. Outraged Mickey and Raymond go on the hunt for the perpetrators, and who could have revealed the location of his underground marijuana bunker.

Enter Coach (Colin Farrell) who runs a boxing gym for disadvantaged youths and to get the youngsters off the streets and away from a life of crime. It just so happens that the gang who raided Mickey's premises, are a group of lads under Coach's mentorship. When Coach finds out that it was his lads who were at the centre of the robbery, he is none too pleased, having heard of Mickey's reputation with those who dare cross him. Coach tracks down Raymond, seeks his forgiveness and says that he will do whatever it takes to make amends for his boys misdeeds, as long as Mickey agrees not to take revenge on them. Raymond says he'll consider it, if Coach can uncover who ordered the robbery.

In no time at all, Coach has the robbery organiser Phuc (Jason Wong) bound and gagged in the boot of his car, and delivered to Raymond. Phuc is manhandled out of the boot, and quickly makes a run for it, jumps over a high wall and lands several metres below straddling a railway track, only to be promptly run over by a speeding intercity express train, with Coach and Raymond looking on from above.

By now, Matthew is getting agitated over the recent incident at one of Mickey's farms and is starting to show signs of cold feet. Meanwhile, Mickey has visited another of his farms and learned that the property owners drug addled pop star teenage daughter is shacked up somewhere doing hard drugs with a bunch of no hopers. Mickey offers to help find the daughter Laura Pressfield (Eliot Sumner), and tasks Raymond with tracking her down, which he is reluctant to do. Needless to say, Raymond is successful with two of his henchmen in tracking down the group and Laura to a tenement block, but in an ensuing scuffle a Russian lad who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time gets thrown out of the window several storey's up and crashes to the ground stone dead. All this is filmed on smart phones by a group of local likely lads hassling Raymond's driver in the street below. The men give chase through the estate to retrieve the smart phones and the potentially damning evidence against them, eventually catching up with the youths and 'persuading' them to part company with their phones. We learn that the Russian lads father is a former high ranking official from the KGB, now resident in England, where his son attended private school. Laura is returned safe to her family.

Fletcher is still laying out all these facts that he has witnessed and has photographs of to Raymond to further reinforce his case for his £20M hush money. Dry Eye is still putting pressure on Mickey, and so Mickey and Raymond pay a visit to his ageing Uncle who runs a cocaine and heroin pushing business at arms length so that there is no comeback on him. Mickey threatens the uncle with exposure and further less subtle repercussions if Dry Eye doesn't get off his back. When the uncle speaks with Dry Eye and tells him to ease off, Dry Eye shoots uncle in the back, dead.

Fletcher reveals one last video clip of Matthew sat next to Dry Eye at a football game in which they are seen and heard to be collaborating together to drive down Mickey's asking price to rock bottom. When he is done with his story telling to Raymond, he gives him 72 hours to come up with the £20M, and leaves. Over the course of the next couple of days, Mickey is heard speaking with Rosalind over the phone from the office of her all female very upmarket auto repair shop, in which Dry Eye is present with the intention of kidnapping her to put pressure on Mickey to comply. Mickey senses something is not right, and here we go back to the very opening scene where the blood is spattered all over Mickey's pint and pickled egg. The man who pulled the gun on Mickey is a Russian who was shot in the back of the head by Raymond who arrived just in the nick of time.

Mickey is involved in a head on collision with a truck en route, from which he scrambles out of the upturned car and races to the auto shop, only to find that Rosalind has shot two of Dry Eye's henchmen in the forehead with a small gifted twin chamber hand gun. Dry Eye is furious and he fights with Rosalind gaining the upper hand and has her pinned down on a desk when Mickey arrives and shoots him dead.

Later Mickey is in conversation with Matthew at one of his refrigerated distribution outlets discussing the deal. Matthew states that Mickey's business is now worth £120M and not the £400M as originally discussed because of the events that have unfolded since the raid, that all twelve of his farms are impacted by this, and that it will take three years for the business to re-establish itself. Mickey turns the tables on Matthew showing him the footage of him conversing with Dry Eye at the football game, and says that he knows it was him who turned over the location of the farm that got raided. Mickey also reveals the now hanging and frozen body of Dry Eye behind a pile of boxes in a freezer container, and says that Matthew has one hour to transfer £100M into his bank account and to give up a pound of his flesh for all the hurt he has caused his business, which is no longer for sale.

When Mickey gets into his car and is driving off, it is revealed that it's not his usual driver behind the wheel but two smiling Russians, one pointing a pistol directly at Mickey. In the meantime, Fletcher has returned to Raymond's place after 72 hours expecting to collect on his £20M, only for the pair to be greeted by two more Russian henchmen wielding guns. Fletcher runs off. The two Russians are taken out by Coach, who by now has more than made good on his commitment to Raymond. Coach's track suited boys meanwhile, follow Mickey's car in a minivan before it leaves the premises, overtake the car, and open fire from the back all guns blazing killing outright the pair of Russians seated in the front, so allowing Mickey to escape out the back unharmed.

Fletcher is last seen pitching his movie script to a Producer at Miramax Studios in London. The Producer ask what happens to Mickey, to which Fletcher responds, 'that's for the sequel'. Fletcher excuses himself as he has an appointment in LA with another Studio and must catch a flight. As he gets into a London cab, Raymond reveals himself to be the driver. Mickey and Rosalind settle down for a cozy night at home.

With 'The Gentlemen' Guy Ritchie has returned to form following an averagely received but nonetheless US$1B+ live action remake of Disney's 'Aladdin', the disastrous 'King Arthur : The Legend of the Sword' and the lacklustre 'The Man from U.N.C.L.E'. The film features stand out performances from the principle cast especially Hugh Grant channelling Michael Caine, has fast paced wise cracking razor sharp foul mouthed dialogue, tangled plots, twists aplenty, snappy editing, racial insults that come thick and fast, faux English gentry, good crims and bad crims and those of just about every nationality and cultural background, some real laugh out loud moments, and just enough deaths and beatings and tongue in cheek humour to satisfy any fan of the genre and Ritchie's much earlier works. It's witty, a lot of fun, very entertaining, contains many of Ritchie's touchstones and well worth the price of your cinema ticket.

'The Gentlemen' warrants four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard, out of a possible five.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-