Review of The Beekeeper: You can put your worries about The Beekeeper's lack of overt apiculture metaphors for delivering vicious ass-whooping justice to rest. You can tell how much more fun this violent vengeance thriller could have been in more lighthearted hands when Jason Statham growls about "killing the queen," "smoking out the hornets," or "protecting the hive," even if director David Ayer sticks to his typical tone of glowering self-seriousness. Nevertheless, it's entertaining enough to witness the bullet-headed action star defeat groups of violent mercenaries and government operatives alike—mostly without using a weapon. Perhaps in Imax much more so.
Statham plays Adam Clay, a veteran field agent from a top-secret national security unit assigned to intervene and restore order whenever some sinister criminal situation gets out of hand, in a screenplay by Kurt Wimmer that is nothing if not realistic. He is no longer a "Beekeeper," as the top-secret government task force is called; instead, he now works as an actual beekeeper, taking great care of the hives and harvesting honey from Eloise Parker's (Phylicia Rashad) picturesque property. We assume she's in danger when Adam confesses that no one has ever shown him the kind of concern that the down-to-earth former schoolteacher has.
As it happens, Eloise is disturbed to see a hard drive malware alert on her laptop screen, directing her to contact a business known as United Data Group. Shortly after, the elderly woman is conned out of her life savings and a $2 million charity account that she oversees by cunning UDG dirtbag Garnett (David Witts).
Garnett preens and poses like Jordan Belfort getting the adoration of his brokerage acolytes in The Wolf of Wall Street at the data-mining center. Later, Enzo Cilenti plays Rico Anzalone, an even more oily scammer at an even bigger sister enterprise. Since it's a David Ayer movie, the offices have bright lights akin to those of a nightclub.
If you remove the apiary component, Blaga's Lessons, Bulgaria's bid for the international feature category of the 2024 Oscars, essentially has these story points. However, Eloise lacks the resourcefulness of the main character in that social-realist novel, who is also a retired schoolteacher, and instead turns to crime. She shoots herself as soon as she concedes defeat. Phylicia, good bye. Someone had to make the honorable sacrifice in order for Jason Statham to go on a vendetta.
Verona (Emmy Raver-Lampman), Eloise's FBI agent daughter, is horrified to discover her mother's motive for suicide in addition to her sorrow over her sparse visits home. With no leads, the Bureau has spent the last two years trying in vain to break through the phishing network. However, Adam finds UDG with only one phone call to a tech specialist from his Beekeeper days, who then uses some fist and footwork along with a few gasoline tanks to neutralize the operation. Garnett and his muscle find Adam just as easily, though naturally their retaliation doesn't go as planned.
Adam leaves a path of destruction that guarantees Verona and her collaborator Wiley (Bobby Naderi), who lead the FBI team, will constantly be after him as the command structure for the data-mining scam becomes clear. Derek Danforth (Josh Hutcherson), a douchebag 28-year-old rich kid cokehead who tricks around his office on a skateboard wearing incredibly horrible clothing (that puke-green suit!) and bad highlights, is the boss of all the several phishing centers.
Hutcherson's choice to be put opposite this kind of good person is undoubtedly a casting decision, but neither the actor nor Wimmer's writing can make the character a compelling or engaging antagonist. The withering contempt of Jeremy Irons as Wallace Westwyld, a former CIA director turned overqualified babysitter hired by Derek's strong mother Jessica Danforth (Jemma Redgrave) to keep the wayward brat out of trouble, has some entertainment value. One important late surprise concerns Jessica's specific role in the public eye.
It is much more entertaining than this film should be to watch Statham's Clay quickly repurpose his attackers' weapons and utilize anything from an elevator rope to a fire extinguisher to a big jar of honey to knock them down. The battle with his replacement Beekeeper, a ferocious WMD named Anisette (Megan Le), who seems to have borrowed her fashion sense from Prince, is one of the more interesting ones. Her metallic purple coat gives off an unusual sense of conspicuousness for someone affiliated with a covert group. Moreover, extremely combustible.
With his powerful filming technique, brash sound design, jittery editing, and a juddering score by David Sardy and Jared Michael Fry that leans into the dark tension, Ayer gives everything a boost. It seems improbable that someone would rush to develop this punch-drunk gibberish into a new Statham franchise. If that were to occur, though, let's hope the filmmaker for the upcoming film is more open to seeing the humor that lies beneath its star's near-superhuman badass behavior.
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