For a certain type of action-movie fan, it’s the most wonderful time of the year: January pulp trashterpiece season. Last year, that slot was occupied by the lean, mean flying machine “Plane,” starring Gerard Butler. This time, it’s the off-brand “John Wick” ripoff “The Beekeeper,” starring Jason Statham and directed by David Ayer.
This profoundly silly and self-aware bit of blood-spurting nonsense is a bracing antidote to the awards-season fare that crowded theaters in December. Ayer’s overstuffed approach to filmmaking elevates Kurt Wimmer’s entertaining but rather thin script.
The PSA-like premise centers on a highly organized phishing scam targeting lonely elderly folks. A warning message pops up on their computers, they dial the number and a sleazy dude in a call center walks them through handing over all their passwords to their bank accounts. But the scammy schemers go up in flames when they target Eloise (Phylicia Rashad), who happens to have an FBI agent for a daughter, Verona (Emmy Raver-Lampman), and a gruffly quiet tenant, Adam Clay (Jason Statham), who just wants to tend to his beehives.
The usually slick Statham embraces Carhartt-core workwear as Adam, who is a literal beekeeper, delivering jars of honey to his warm landlady. He’s also a retired “beekeeper,” a highly classified assassin that exists outside the chain of government command whose mission is to “protect the hive.” When the phone scammers target Adam’s queen, he moves into action to smoke out the predatory hornets.
And what insidious hornets they are. Ayer’s filmmaking is a gleefully blunt instrument: While Adam’s home is shot like a Ford commercial with natural sunlight pouring through the beams of his barn, the call centers are lighted like hellish raves with pink and blue neon lighting casting a pall on the obnoxious emcees who rile up their minions like devilish game-show hosts. One of them wears a suit with the word “GOAT” printed all over it. Every one of these scammers wears a thick gold chain and satin shirt like a “Saturday Night Fever” extra, so it’s easy to distinguish the bad guys
The usually slick Statham embraces Carhartt-core workwear as Adam, who is a literal beekeeper, delivering jars of honey to his warm landlady. He’s also a retired “beekeeper,” a highly classified assassin that exists outside the chain of government command whose mission is to “protect the hive.” When the phone scammers target Adam’s queen, he moves into action to smoke out the predatory hornets.
And what insidious hornets they are. Ayer’s filmmaking is a gleefully blunt instrument: While Adam’s home is shot like a Ford commercial with natural sunlight pouring through the beams of his barn, the call centers are lighted like hellish raves with pink and blue neon lighting casting a pall on the obnoxious emcees who rile up their minions like devilish game-show hosts. One of them wears a suit with the word “GOAT” printed all over it. Every one of these scammers wears a thick gold chain and satin shirt like a “Saturday Night Fever” extra, so it’s easy to distinguish the bad guys
Ayer brings a colorful tactility to “The Beekeeper” and surrounds Statham’s stoic avenging angel with a big, interesting cast. (Any movie that has Minnie Driver playing a honey-accented CIA director for all of two minutes at least deserves an appreciative chuckle.) But the main character himself is a cipher, and the lore isn’t exactly deep, so without Ayer putting everything into the locations, sets, cinematography, casting and stunts, it seems that sequels would provide diminishing returns. But this wacky bit of action fun is wildly entertaining and zips by with the good-natured buzz of a bumblebee. If this is your kind of dumb-movie honey, it’s delectable.