Now would be a good time to tell a story on the crooked ways of the people in the White House. However, Jason Statham is not about to get all serious on us. So there is the US President, and there is the US President’s drug-snorting, scruple-less son, but what The Beekeeper is about is Statham and Statham alone, plus how many things one can throw at the charismatic action star without him needing to catch his breath.
It starts out with Statham’s ex-government agent actually raising some bees, extracting honey and decimating hornets, in a quiet corner of a countryside, using the barn of a lovely old lonely widow. The two strike a friendship. And hence when that woman is scammed out of her life’s savings, by a bunch of indiscriminate city slickers, Statham as in Adam Clay as in ‘The Beekeeper’ decides to sting back.
Asking no questions, for needing no answers, Clay sets about killing people and burning down buildings, working his way right up the hierarchy till he reaches the doors of, you know, who.
Hutcherson plays against type as the badass son who should know better now that mom is in the White House. While Jeremy Irons hangs around in a thankless role as an ex-CIA man and now the security in-charge and the keeper of secrets of the President’s son. Even Minnie Driver turns up as a blink-and-miss CIA operative.
There is no humour to relieve the violence here, though Statham has proved himself pretty proficient in that department, and there is barely any pause in the relentless fighting. Worse, while ‘Beekeepers’ is meant to be the name of one of those US Black Op programmes that work under the radar, and Clay just one among them now retired, he clearly loves his job enough to raise bees and keep dropping inane bee references.
Queen bee, slave bee, queen slayer… you name it, and you have it. One of those bulky sorts blind to the powers of Clay even threatens him asking: “To bee or not to bee, that is the bloody question.”
Let’s just say he gets his stinging answer.
The Beekeeper movie cast: Jason Statham, Josh Hutcherson, Jeremy Irons, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Jemma Redgrave
The Beekeeper movie director: David Ayer
The Beekeeper movie review: 1 star
