If you deliberately turn up for a movie starring Jason Statham, I’m guessing The Beekeeper is exactly the type of movie you’re hoping will play. Directed by David Ayer (Fury, Suicide Squad, End of Watch), The Beekeeper opens with Statham literally in the role of a loner who keeps bees for honey who has befriended an older woman named Eloise (Phylicia Rashad) and seems to appreciate both her friendship and the isolation she allows him to keep. One day, telemarketing scammers manage to take every penny from Eloise, including a $2 million account she maintains for a foundation, and she’s so distraught, she kills herself in the aftermath. Her FBI Agent daughter Verona (Emmy Raver-Lampman, The Umbrella Academy) makes it her mission to find out who did this to her saintly mother, while Statham’s Adam Clay decides to take a more direct approach at getting revenge by first finding the criminal call center and burning the entire building to the ground.
Perhaps it goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway), there’s more to Statham’s character than meets the eye. Just like there’s more to the call center corporation than we realize at first. At one point in his life, Clay was part of an elite secret government operative organization known as Beekeepers, who carried out missions that the military simply couldn’t. Their jobs were to “protect the hive” of the United States and destroy anything that threatened it. A single beekeeper can wipe out dozens of soldiers in a single battle, so taking down a barely protected call center armed with little more than a couple cans of gasoline is nothing for Clay.
Although not exactly working together, Clay and Agent Parker do share enough information that they are able to follow the money trail of the various call centers to its CEO, Derek Danforth (Josh Hutcherson, in full dickish nepo-baby mode), who just happens to be the son of the President of the United States (Jemma Redgrave) and is being looked after by one of his mother’s admirers, Wallace Westwyld (Jeremy Irons), who is desperately trying, and failing miserably, to keep Clay from getting anywhere near Derek. Since exposing this call center company could damage the president’s reputation, and since Clay isn’t officially a beekeeper any longer (in the professional sense), there’s really no stopping him, and he rampages through private security teams and personal armies pulled together by Westwyld to get to the President’s son.
To be clear, The Beekeeper is one of the more violent action movies I’ve seen in quite some time, and I have no issues with that. Statham plays Clay as slightly psychotic, complete with a couple choice one-liners, but he’s never glib and never forgets that he’s there because a lovely old woman was taken advantage of by a greedy little shit and died as a result. Clay believes that in some cases the only way the hive can survive is by taking out the queen, and some interpret this to mean that he’s willing to kill the president if she’s not able to control her son. Written by Kurt Wimmer, the film is brutal, bloody, loud and gives us a body count that fans of director Ayer should be familiar with. It’s not a complicated or groundbreaking work, but it’s practically the textbook definition of a solid, meat-and-potatoes action flick. It’s also exactly what I wish Statham would do more of, instead of turning up for the vibe in films like Expendables 4 or whatever Fast & Furious movie we’re up to know. The Beekeeper isn’t afraid to get bloody or graphic, and it’s a better film for it.
The film is now playing in theaters.
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