MGM. 2024. Thriller. 105 min.
Grade: 1.5 out of 4
The idea that all we need to enjoy a Jason Statham movie is to see him punch, stab, shoot, and kick his way through 90 minutes of high-energy mayhem is put to its harshest test in The Beekeeper. Written and directed by people whose better work is fading into history’s rear view, this is the flimsiest, silliest, most thinly-conceptualized pretense for Statham to scowl and brawl his way through another high gloss wannabe franchise launcher. It’s also potentially the funniest. Pity director David Ayer never realized that he was halfway to making the next MacGruber comedy, if only he’d leaned even harder into the bee-related puns, broad characterizations, and wildly escalating stakes. Instead, he delivers a high-octane neo-Schwarzenegger action riff with rickety worldbuilding and B-movie John Wick aspirations. If nothing else, The Beekeeper allows for a more fulsome appreciation of Statham’s magnetism and brick shithouse sturdiness which are so indestructible that he can barrel through this film’s inadequacies with righteous purpose, energetic fight moves, a deadly glower, and an ever-so disarming Cockney-adjacent accent.
Neither Ayer (Suicide Squad, End of Watch) nor screenwriter Kurt Wimmer (TV’s Sons of Anarchy and the underappreciated Angelina Jolie thriller Salt) are ones for subtlety so pairing them with a rampaging fist like Statham would seem promising for those who like their action nasty, brutish, and short. But Wimmer’s sledgehammer story is rudimentary even for a film of this type and the higher the stakes the fuzzier and more improbable it becomes. And once the President of the United States gets involved, a story that began as a tale of a special agent exacting revenge in the name of the little guy has spun ridiculously out of control becoming—of all things—a half-assed, pee-brained plea for campaign finance reform. But first we meet Adam Clay (Statham), the world’s hottest beekeeper, tending to his bees and harvesting honey which he occasionally delivers to Eloise (Phylicia Rashad), his beloved elderly neighbor and the only one “who’s ever taken care of me” which means she’ll be dead by the next reel. And so it goes when she commits suicide after being victimized in a phishing scam that wipes out her life savings.
In the best cinematic world building, internal logic is consistent and makes sense, and its rules are clearly established and maintained. That’s more important than even complexity as the John Wick films have shown us. Then there’s The Beekeeper. After Eloise’s death, Adam reveals himself as not just a beekeeper but a retired member of a shadowy, extralegal collection of lethal good guys called The Beekeepers who are so secret even the audience has no idea why they formed, how many there are, what limits are imposed upon them, who controls them, or how they operate. All we know is the Beekeepers are the world’s last line of defense when every other means of law enforcement has failed and that Adam is one of them. And as he shoots and punches his way up the ladder in avenging Eloise’s death, Adam’s seemingly limitless abilities and willingness to beat the beejesus out of not only bad guys, but cops, Secret Servicemen, ex-Navy SEALs, and FBI agents make the concept an uncomfortable and barely-there justification for Statham to mete out his grimly inevitable brand of extra-judicial justice.
And once a Beekeeper has you in his sights, your death is indeed inevitable, a fact that former CIA director Wallace Westwyld (Jeremy Irons, classing up the joint) delivers to his douchebag, skateboarding son Derek (Josh Hutcherson) who runs the network of call centers that scammed Eloise. Father and son marshal a veritable army of steroidal tough guys to stop Adam but since—in pure and lazy B-movie fashion—they all attack Adam one at a time instead of ganging up on him, he dispatches them with ease (with the exception of Best in Show villain Taylor James as a one-legged missile of South African rage). In fact, Adam is so quick and efficient in working his way up the villainous food chain that when he blows up his second data mining office—both envisioned by DP Gabriel Baristain as Vegas strip clubs—it’s noted that Eloise had only died the previous day. His efforts easily eclipse those of Eloise’s daughter Verona, a superfluous audience surrogate and FBI agent who seems to care very little that her mother is dead and is played with near-zero credibility by Emmy Raver-Lampman. She does, however, get to participate in delivering the script’s slow drip of gravely-intoned bee puns about “protecting the hive” and “kicking the hornet’s nest” that become like Chinese water torture.
Much like his work in superior offerings such as The Transporter and even Crank, the scruffy and determined Statham carries the film like a pro although at this stage in his career (despite his darkened beard in The Beekeeper, Statham is 56 years old) one would hope he’d have more to offer the art of cinema. But—like Norris and Van Damme and others before him—action fodder of varying quality is both his wheelhouse and his legacy. So in The Beekeeper, feel free to acknowledge the satisfaction in watching Statham saunter up to a call center with a pair of 5-gallon gasoline canisters and fulfill his promise to blow the entire building to smithereens. The nonsense surrounding it is the price we’re still willing to pay to watch him do it.