The Beekeeper stings with a predictable plot and tired tropes. Jason Statham delivers but the movie lets him down.
Jason Statham stars as the titular beekeeper, Adam Clay, who is living a quiet, retired life in his hive until someone comes poking at him with a stick. While it was enjoyable watching Statham kick ass and break necks in a call centre before burning it down, the movie is the usual, basic, bore of an action film.
When Clay is shown bonding with his sweet, maternal landlady, we know something awful will happen to her. It’s a predictable scene lacking authenticity. A dollar store version of DiCaprio from Wolf of Wall Street (David Witts), scams the lady out of her entire fortune and then some. The phishing scam is run by Derek Danforth (Josh Hutcherson, in a new, devilish avatar) who has a lot of might backing him, legal and otherwise.
After Clay’s initial attack on the call centre, Derek sends his goons to hunt him down. Surprised by the lethal retaliation from a beekeeper, Derek seeks counsel from Wallace Westwyld (what Jeremy Irons is doing in this movie, I’ll never understand), a former CIA director who now works for Derek’s mother. Westwyld educates the boy about a secret organization called Beekeepers, a network of the most highly trained, rogue agents that work alone and ungoverned by any other entity.
Clay, a retired Beekeeper decides to assign himself a mission to bring down Derek’s enterprise. Apparently, that’s what bees do, too.Â
The movie trudges along with bad bee puns and more information about beehives than one would care to know. If only they invested the time taken to research beehives in character development. The deceased landlady has a daughter working for the FBI who’s trying to piece together the mystery of the beekeeper, Agent Veronica Parker (Emmy Raver-Lampman). But she moves on from her mother’s death faster than Clay has! Bantering with her partner Matt Riley (Bobby Naderi), attempting to provide levity to the proceedings. I mean, could the writers have not found a different character to be funny in the movie?
Jason Statham is the only reason the movie is barely watchable. He brings the necessary believability to the movie with his action-star grit. The action is passable but with its fair share of well-trained bad guys missing clear shots while the good guy is firing magic bullets.
David Ayer, the director of the movie misses more than he hits in his job. He lacks fresh ideas and as always, relies heavily on star power. The Beekeeper is just another movie in a cluster of poor John Wick imitations which we have seen plenty of since that movie revitalised the action genre.
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