SHIP HAPPENS

Now playing in the multiplexes:

Mutiny--Since the massive success of Die Hard in 1988, American action pictures have gone through a long phase of "Die Hard in a..." [whatever]. So, Under Siege (1992) with Steven Seagal was Die Hard on a Navy ship. The Jean Claude Van Damme vehicle Sudden Death (1995) was Die Hard in a hockey stadium. White House Down (2013) with Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx was Die Hard in the White House.

The format is the same—a skilled action hero, mostly alone though sometimes aided by allies, takes on a gang of repulsive, heavily armed organized mercenaries or terrorists in an enclosed environment, and screws up their efforts to do something nasty. Last weekend brought Mutiny, which could be called Die Hard on a cargo ship.

Our hero this time is Jason Statham as a bodyguard who's framed for the murder of his shipping tycoon boss and friend. Disguised as one of the killers, he sneaks aboard a ship out of Bangkok and out at sea finds it to be a human trafficking boat crewed, to a man, by scummy lethal thugs. Very quickly he starts ruining their day by gruesomely ending their lives.

A newly assigned young Third Officer (Annabelle Wallis), the only crew member not in on the crime, helps Statham in his efforts to save the refugees. The shrewd captain (Adrian Lester) of a nearby U.S. Naval ship is also in his corner.

Directed by Jean-Francois Richet from a script by Lindsay Michel and J. P. Davis, and produced in part by Statham's own production company, Mutiny is a deft, tightly-paced pleasure; one of the better straightforward action flicks I've seen in a while. The trick is that the villains here are so thoroughly odious, and their victims so poignant, that it's extremely satisfying when Statham mutilates them.

Richet also avoids the sort of cartoonish, over-the-top action—heroes being blown to safety by the force of huge explosions, as a friend of mine likes to put it—that has made so many action movies of recent years seem so silly. The fights and feats we see in Mutiny probably aren't that much more realistic than those in, say, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning or Bad Boys: Ride or Die, but Richet handles them with a lower-key tone that makes them more believable, and Statham's quietly warm manner helps with this as well.

Until toward the end, that is. Statham's final clash with main bad guy involves injuries to both men that seem hard to survive, let alone to continue mortal combat with. But the movie doesn't truly tip over into camp until the last line--indeed, the very last word--at which even Mickey Spillane might roll his eyes.

SPY CANDY

Opening this weekend...

Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre--Bad guys have stolen some horrible world-threatening thingy from a laboratory, and initially British Intelligence isn't even sure what it is. Not to worry, though--luxury-loving man of action Orson Fortune, played by Jason Statham, is placed on the case, with a high-tech team assisting him.

The McGuffin, when we finally learn what it is, turns out to be disappointingly vague and prosaic. The ride to retrieve it, however, directed by Guy Ritchie from a script by Ivan Atkinson, Marn Davies and the director, is pretty enjoyable, in the usual headlong Ritchie manner. We're zipped from one exotic location to another, Morocco and Madrid and Turkey and more, via private planes and yachts and villas, and there are shootouts and car chases and helicopter duels. It's swanky, with an edge of irony and plenty of violence to distance us from the shallow glamour.

All of  which is to say, Operation Fortune is essentially an off-brand Bond flick, and a sufficiently skilled one to offer an amusing, relaxing couple of hours free of substance and ethics. Despite Ritchie's assured technique, the real appeal is the cast. Statham shrewdly keeps it low-key and lets his costars shine: Cary Elwes as Orson's nettled boss, Eddie Marsan as the boss's boss and Bugzy Malone as Orson's stalwart sidekick.

Josh Hartnett, whose existence I had largely forgotten, has a nice turn as a Hollywood star pressed into service on the mission, and Aubrey Plaza is appealingly insouciant as a slinky computer whiz, complete with closeups of her lips as she purrs directions into a mic. She reminded me of Adrienne Barbeau as the deejay in The Fog.

The standout in the company, however, is Hugh Grant as the cockney billionaire arms dealer that Fortune's team targets. It's surprising how flexible Grant's diffident persona has proven; what's even more striking is that, even as this callous, corruption-encrusted vulgarian, he still manages to be likable.

SHARKKKLANSMAN

Check out my reviews, on Phoenix Magazine online, of Spike Lee's BlacKkKlannsman and of this weekend's winner at the box office, The Meg.

Yesterday The Kid captured this thoughtful study of Your Humble Narrator...

...as we waited in the car outside a store for The Wife. She texted it to her, with the caption "Dead asleep." The Wife replied "Did you mean, 'Dad asleep?'" She did, but it would have been accurate either way.

SPEED KILLS

Opening this weekend:

Furious Seven—My mother always hated car chase movies. She used to take me to the live-action Disney comedies of the early ‘70s irritably, under protest, because they routinely ended with a wacky car chase. A few years later, she was appalled when one of my nephews became an avid fan of The Dukes of Hazzard, and insisted on getting in the car through the open window.

Over the years I’ve enjoyed many a movie car chase, but at some deep psychological level I’ve always felt a little guilt over this, knowing that my Mom wouldn’t approve. That feeling was magnified while I watched this seventh entry in the Fast and the Furious series. The accident that killed star Paul Walker in 2013 wasn’t part of the film’s production (nor was Walker driving). But it was speed-related, and it’s hard to overcome the sense that movies like this franchise—the implicit message of which is that it’s impossible to be seriously injured in a car crash—may contribute to mishaps like this.

In a showpiece scene of Furious 7 [spoiler alert!], Vin Diesel and Walker drive a high-performance car out of the upper-floor window of a high-rise building. They sail through the air into the windows of the neighboring high-rise, then across that building and out the far side, through the air again into a third high-rise. When Diesel begins barreling toward the windows, Walker yells “Cars can’t fly! Cars can’t fly!” but there’s no sign that director James Wan agrees. This and other scenes inevitably have a macabre extra resonance.

The story has Diesel’s street racing gang turned government agents stalked by vengeful Brit special forces rogue Jason Statham. Djimon Hounsou is another heavy, Dwayne Johnson is the lead G-man, Michelle Rodriguez is back with her beguiling Snoopy-vulture scowl, and Kurt Russell saunters in for a few entertaining scenes as a shifty covert ops honcho. All of the actors, starting with the always-endearing Diesel, are agreeable, and the dialogue is so self-consciously macho, the action so cartoonishly overscaled that it’s hard to resist the idea that the whole thing is a put-on, and start enjoying the silliness.

But every time a vehicle plummeted off a cliff in the Caucasus only to have its passengers emerge looking better than I do after a good night’s sleep, every time somebody leapt from one vehicle to another with barely a bruise, every time a car jumped from a parking garage and delivered a duffel bag to a helicopter in flight, some party-pooper part of me couldn’t help but think, this sort of vehicular fantasy, seductive even for a non-gearhead like me, isn’t harmless. The mindset it creates may have contributed to the death of one of this movie’s own stars.

Furious 7 is overlong, like many action blockbusters, but I can’t claim that I wasn’t diverted by some of the movie’s preposterous excesses. But it still may qualify as one of the stupider, more irresponsible movies I’ve ever seen, and when it made me smile, I thought I could sense my Mom scowling at me.