The Bee's Knees
Summary
The Beekeeper is one of Jason Statham’s best movies in years and it’s packed with fights, explosions and a few bee-related puns making this feel like classic old-school action cinema.
Plot: In The Beekeeper, one man’s brutal campaign for vengeance takes on national stakes after he is revealed to be a former operative of a powerful and clandestine organization known as “Beekeepers.”
Review: When a movie is called The Beekeeper, you’re probably expecting lots of Bee related puns in my review… and you’d bee right. I’m not sorry, either.
Jason Statham is back in what is arguably one of his best ever roles as a Beekeeper called Adam Clay who looks after Bees but also works for a shadowy government agency where he “protects the hive”. As you can tell from the trailers, one of Clay’s elderly friends has her life ruined by scammers and ends up committing suicide. As she is one of the few people who looked after Clay in his life, he vows revenge and will stop at nothing to make the scammers feel his sting.
What ensues is Statham punching, stabbing, kicking, and shooting his way through the villains and we’re cheering him along the entire time. Scammers are the lowest forms of life and deserve everything they get, making this movie the ultimate in wish fulfillment.
The script has some wonderful puns with the highlight being “To Bee or Not to Bee” with Clay responding with “I’ll take option Bee” which had our audience in hysterics. This clearly isn’t a movie that takes itself too seriously, which makes it all the more fun feeling like a throwback to classic action cinema.
Josh Hutcherson is wonderfully slimy as the main antagonist who runs all the scam companies and Clay has him in his sights for extermination. Jeremy Irons is a little underused and I wish he had more to do, but he isn’t quite the character I expected from the trailers.
Directed by David Ayer, we get some unbeelievable action scenes and almost too many awesome moments to mention however, when Clay goes to burn the call center down I was practically jumping out of my seat with glee. At an hour and 45 minutes it’s well paced and never dull giving the audience exactly what we’re there for.
The final fight scene with the South African henchman delivers the goods and is Statham at his brutal best. He remains one of the last “tough guys” in modern movies and he’s always beelievable in these kinds of roles as you would never want to Bee on the receiving end of one of his punches or kicks.
In terms of flaws, you could say that Statham is playing his usual invincible badass where he rarely gets injured which does take away some of the threat, but he does get a few wounds causing him to briefly flinch.
Overall, The Beekeeper had me buzzing by the time the end credits rolled as it’s action packed, filled with a few bee-related puns and Statham in his best role in years. I hope we get a franchise out of this as it’s the kind of ridiculously entertaining action picture we don’t see so much anymore and Statham is perfectly cast.
