Image courtesy of IMDb
Hello, everyone.
As was the case last year, the first two movies I review this year end up being a horror movie and an action movie.
Much like Plane last year, this one ended up being surprisingly good. However, this has one edge over that: It has a better known director behind it with David Ayer, who gave us End of Watch and Fury*. He’s also known for writing Training Day and cowriting The Fast and the Furious.
Here, we get Jason Statham doing his version of John Wick (minus the gun fu, though there is still a connection involving that, which I’ll get to later).
He’s not doing jobs no questions asked, fighting sharks, being part of an 80s action tribute, or even working against (nor ultimately with) Dominic Toretto and his family**.
This time, he’s handling hives and taking lives, as I review The Beekeeper.
The story here follows Adam Clay, a beekeeper working for Eloise Parker, a retired teacher who has been taking care of him for a long time on the Massachusetts countryside.
One day, everything seems fine, until Eloise falls for a phishing scam, which affects her so much she commits suicide.
Clay finds the body, and is at first arrested by an FBI agent who also happens to be Eloise’s daughter Verona, but later released.
Though she tells him that the scammers responsible have been difficult for the FBI to track down, he still wants to go after them, so he calls for help from an organization called the Beekeepers.
What Worked: The acting is very solid. Of the five movies that he’s been in over the span of a year (counting this one), this is a step up for Jason Statham, particularly from the last one, which was The Expendables 4***.
This felt like he got to be the type of character he’s known for and people love him for (gruff demeanor, but determined nonetheless to make things right), so it was refreshing to see that again here. It was equally refreshing to see that sense of self-awareness he occasionally brings to his roles. This feels like he somewhat knows the plot is absurd, and he’s just having fun with it, complete with one-liners.
Emmy Raver-Lampman, who plays Verona, is believable as an FBI agent and as Phylicia Rashad’s daughter. You can tell at times she has as much determination as Clay in bringing these scammers to justice.
Phylicia Rashad, though she is not in it much for obvious reasons, is still good for the time that she’s in it.
It was nice to see Jeremy Irons in an action movie again, and it was surprising that he wasn’t the villain in it this time.
The villain here is Josh Hutcherson of Hunger Games fame. He was good at playing a scammer, but as a main villain… I’ll get more into that later, I’ll put it that way.
The last one I can really talk about without giving too much away is someone I was really surprised to be able to see in a movie again (nostalgia for Tarzan notwithstanding), and that’s Minnie Driver as the Director of the CIA.
Though she’s not in it much, either, she does have some significance from a narrative standpoint, and I like that. She’s there to help provide the backstory of who the Beekeepers are and what they do.
David Ayer’s direction is really good, and he definitely knows how to film action. The bigger surprise from a technical perspective, though, was actually the script from Kurt Wimmer (who also produced alongside Ayer and Statham).
The script, while by no means groundbreaking, is easily among his better scripts, and definitely the best project he’s worked on in a long time. This is a huge step up from The Expendables 4, but in terms of what he has contributed to, this might be my second favorite, behind Equilibrium, which he wrote and directed****.
It goes without saying at this point, but the plot here is simple, but effective.
I also thought that the title ultimately has more than one meaning within the context of the movie. Though it was an action movie trope, I still found it to be pretty clever.
The action is a lot of fun, and there are some satisfying kills, including one that they unfortunately gave away in the trailer. It stings when they do that (sorry, I had to fit in at least one pun).
Speaking of that…
What Didn’t Work: I don’t really have much in terms of issues, but there were still some things that really stuck out to me.
There is a plot twist here, but it doesn’t feel like anything new. In the context of the story itself, it makes sense, but it’s so absurd by that point that you have to just go along with it.
While I did say that Josh Hutcherson was good at playing a scammer, I couldn’t really buy him as a main villain. It didn’t take me out of the movie because I was having so much fun with it already, but what I just stated about the plot twist can be applied to that as well.
The biggest issue I have is how I mentioned that there was one kill they gave away in the trailer. That’s really the only creative kill in the movie, and they show it in the trailer. If you’re going to do that, at least have a good amount of them in the movie. Some can be shown in the trailer, but the rest have to be saved for the movie. As it stands, nothing since Violent Night has done that.
Though it sounds like I’m not giving it credit for having a creative kill because it was spoiled, I’m giving it credit for still managing to have one.
The reason why is it did what Night Swim did not: It took advantage of the opportunity to have them. If the movie has at least one (in spite of what I just stated), I’ll still give it credit as long as it’s in the marketing and carries over into the movie.
I would’ve loved to see more, but I do think overloading it with them might’ve detracted from the overall plot and tone, so since it’s not that kind of movie, I can understand and let it slide.
Overall: The Beekeeper is a lot of fun, especially for a January action movie. You get to see Jason Statham tear people apart in ultimately satisfying ways, and a very good supporting cast, with a very straightforward plot, solid direction from David Ayer, and a surprisingly decent script.
Though it doesn’t have much in the way of creative kills (let alone a better villain), it makes up for it by still being fun.
It’s one of Jason Statham’s better action movies in a long time, so if nothing else, see it for him and the action.
You’ll more than likely get your money’s worth, regardless of when or where you see it.
Next time, we witness Americans and Russians going at each other on the ground… but from space.
*Yes, he also gave us the first big-screen adaptation of Suicide Squad, but what we ended up with was not his fault.
**I would add “helping track down Gabriel Yulaw,” but I already covered that.
***I’m not calling it by how they marketed it (number within the title). For me, at least, it’s lazy, it’s annoying, and it’s stupid when they do that. It was like that last decade when they were doing it quite a bit, and it still is now. Plus, it’s really only worked once for me, because one movie last year did it in a way that was subtle and clever. Even so, both that and The Expendables 4 (which is another movie I didn’t completely hate like a lot of people did) are each for their own review.
****That movie has gun fu in it (also known as gun kata, even in the movie), and the style used in it is actually one he created. In a way, without that movie, we wouldn’t have ones like John Wick.