The Beekeeper Actually Isn’t Dumb Enough
Jason Statham, an actor who has a clause in his contracts stipulating how many punches he can take in movies, and that he cannot lose in an on-screen fight, has graduated into playing a character that’s a wholly unstoppable killing machine—the man’s Mary Sue, if you will. He speaks very little, he fights, murders and maims a whole lot, and, of course, it’s all in service of the greater good. “Protecting the hive,” some might say. Statham’s sheer relentlessness and bloodlust in his newest film is empirically comical, yet perhaps it’s a matter of ego that he never quite surpasses what could make it a better film. This inane new Statham vehicle, The Beekeeper—directed by Suicide Squad auteur David Ayer and written by Expend4bles’ Kurt Wimmer—manages to be moderately stimulating, all things considered, though it suffers from the filmmakers’ inability to allow it to be as inane as it clearly should be.
The Beekeeper follows Statham’s character, Adam Clay, a humble (if stoic and quietly menacing) beekeeper who rents space in a lonely old woman’s barn out in rural, isolated Springfield, Massachusetts, where he tends to his beehive and gives the woman, Eloise (Phylicia Rashad), some much-needed company. Unbeknownst to her, Clay is a retired operative of a secret, ruthless organization with its claws in just about every aspect of government, known as “The Beekeepers.” See, Clay isn’t just a beekeeper, he’s also a Beekeeper—a strange way to secretly shed his past life, but nevertheless… I mean, beekeeping is a noble, and delicious, hobby.
Clay embarks upon a self-imposed mission to single-handedly annihilate multiple chains of command when they all lead back to Eloise getting scammed by a fraudulent telemarketing company, whose sole aim is to drain wealthy old people of all their finances. Distraught at what she’s done, which includes losing $2 million for a charity account she managed, Eloise tragically takes her own life.
Eloise’s FBI agent daughter Verona (Emmy Raver-Lampman) finds Clay’s sketchy ass, her mother’s dead body, and a big jar of honey in her mother’s home. Verona immediately suspects Clay, but when she realizes she’s got the wrong guy, she frees Clay to go on a rampage and enact his unceasing man-made horrors beyond comprehension. Using his connects at his old job, Clay locates the company branch that scammed Eloise, and promptly burns it to the ground. When the boss man, Mickey Garnett (David Witts), and his heavies arrive at Clay’s doorstep in the aftermath, Clay eliminates all of them—along with all the fingers on Mickey’s hand—before attaching Mickey’s body to Clay’s pick-up truck, sending both of them hurtling off a bridge. He sets a gas station on fire when a former colleague comes to settle the score, and sets her on fire too.
It becomes clear to the men above Mickey—nepo-baby tech brat Derek Danforth (Josh Hutcherson, great at playing this kind of guy) and his second-in-command Wallace Westwyld (Jeremy Irons, who I hope got paid very well)—that there is very little to halt the one-man barrage of torment that’s coming for them.
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