Review: The Beekeeper
Jason Statham has recently had a string of mediocre to just plain terrible movies (*cough* Expend4bles *cough*), with only Wrath of Man delivering what we really want from Statham. The Beekeeper is thankfully peak Statham and utterly ridiculous in almost every way.
Statham plays Adam Clay, a retired “Beekeeper”. The Beekeepers are a clandestine organization that works outside of all governmental infrastructure, tasked with maintaining the systems of society (or The Hive), and allowed to use whatever force is needed if something goes out of wack. Clay is also a literal beekeeper, renting space in sweet Eloise Parker’s (Phylicia Rashad) barn for his honey-making business. When Eloise gets scammed by a phishing operation that drains every cent of money she has, she kills herself, which sets Clay off on a personal mission of revenge to dismantle the entire operation from the bottom up. The movie starts at a level of crazy with the concept of The Beekeeper organization and continues to ramp itself up to ridiculous levels and, when you think it can’t get any more insane, there’s a twist that takes things to an even more ludicrous level. One issue is that The Beekeeper can’t quite figure out the tone it wants to go for. There are tons of colorful assassins and an understanding of how things work with The Beekeepers that feels like John Wick. Still, it never fully embraces becoming a full-on cartoon and Statham is playing everything deadly seriously, which makes things even more hilarious. Emmy Raver-Lampman, who plays Phylicia Rashad’s FBI agent daughter Verona is also playing things mostly grounded, so it feels at times like characters from two different movies are getting mashed up, especially on the villain side of things.
If you’re on board for all the insanity, The Beekeeper is incredibly entertaining, with Statham being an unstoppable killing force that delivers satisfying vengeance to cartoonishly evil villains. There are some creative kills and some awesome action throughout and it showcases everything fans have come to love from a glowering, revenge-fueled Statham character. Josh Hutcherson plays a great, eminently hatable villain while Jeremy Irons is basically Michael Nyquist from John Wick, fully aware of what is coming for them and terrified. Raver-Lampman is fine and she and her FBI partner, played by Bobby Naderi, have some fun banter and offer up the “normal” person perspective on this insane world of secret global organizations and massive conspiracies.
The Beekeeper is definitely not a great movie but it is absurdly entertaining and delivers exactly what you want from a Statham movie, where he just goes on an unstoppable rampage against villains who definitely deserve whatever brutal and creative death is coming for them. It has tons of solid action and if you’re on board for how ludicrous the plot is, you’ll definitely have a great time.