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.
Meanwhile, Verona and her FBI partner Matt Wiley (Bobby Naderi) try to make some sense of what’s happening and who Clay really is, uncovering the truth behind The Beekeeper organization—which no one they speak with wants to talk about. Something about the sacredness of the honeybee and what they have provided for civilizations for thousands of years, that’s essentially what The Beekeepers do for modern humanity. Clay is a Beekeeper gone rogue, enacting his own version of, as I mentioned before, “protecting the hive.” A slew of bee puns follow suit, all spoken with comical gravity by Statham, who makes it difficult to discern whether he’s in on the joke—all completely part of his charm.
While Statham’s deadly seriousness in tackling the material isn’t an issue, it speaks to a bigger problem with The Beekeeper. It’s a film with a ludicrous premise that doesn’t seem to be in on the joke either, to detrimental effect. This is less about that grating wink-wink, nudge-nudge irony that should be made extinct in pop culture; a film like The Beekeeper can still be sincere while able to embrace its own absurdity.
It’s a delicate balance that not many films seem able to pull off these days, and The Beekeeper’s particular inability to do so only hinders it (you could say something similar about Statham’s Giant Shark franchise, too). At one point, Mickey and his heavies destroy Clay’s hives and set his bees loose in a frenzied swarm; naturally, I thought it was meant to foreshadow Clay utilizing his bees as deadly weapons later in the movie. Nope!!!! It’s a one-time occurrence and a completely wasted opportunity. The swarm of bees don’t even go after the villains who demolished their home, they simply buzz-buzz away into the great beyond.
The Beekeeper is not without its charms. I didn’t have a bad time watching it, and I was surprised by how deftly its narrative clips along. That is, up until the final act, at which point everything drags and inevitably paves the way for a possible Beekeeper 2, should this film make enough money to warrant it. The fight sequences are weighted and kinetic and well-shot, and, again, it’s objectively funny just how unrelenting and unkillable Statham’s character is. But The Beekeeper just can’t seem to elevate itself enough above being a generic, forgettable action dreck. If it stays in peoples’ memories at all, it will only be for the way the premise alone sounds silly when you say it out loud. But that energy doesn’t translate well enough into the actual 100 minutes you spend watching it play out. That’s it, that’s the review. No bee puns still, after all this time. You’re not getting a bee pun out of me. Fuck you.
Director: David Ayer
Writer: Kurt Wimmer
Starring: Jason Statham, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Josh Hutcherson, Bobby Naderi, Minnie Driver, Phylicia Rashad, Jeremy Irons
Release Date: January 12, 2024
Brianna Zigler is an entertainment writer based in middle-of-nowhere Massachusetts. Her work has appeared at Little White Lies, Film School Rejects, Thrillist, Bright Wall/Dark Room and more, and she writes a bi-monthly newsletter called That’s Weird. You can follow her on Twitter, where she likes to engage in stimulating discussions on films like Movie 43, Clifford, and Watchmen.