The Beekeper is, until he decides to exercise his acting chops once again as opposed to just chopping people upside the head, the closest to a return to form for Jason Statham that we’re going to get. They’re two completely different films, but this right here is Statham’s best movie since Snatch (and that was sort of a fluke; as Wrath of Man proved, going back to Guy Ritchie is a non-starter for Statham); it does for him what Master Gardener did for Joel Edgerton.
It’s also a step in the right direction for Jeremy Irons following two aimless decades, a superior follow-up to director David Ayer’s The Tax Collector (which, although uneven, was nonetheless his best work since End of Watch), and orders of magnitude above the worthless crap that screenwriter Kurt Wimmer usually churns out. The bar was so low it was practically underground, but maybe that lack of pressure worked in the film’s favor, and the result far exceeds expectations.
On a more personal note, Adam Clay (Statham) is a man after my own heart. The difference is that I only dream of bludgeoning, maiming, blowing up, and otherwise executing phishing scammers with extreme prejudice.
United Data Group is ostensibly a “data mining consumer service business” (or “metaverse meth lab,” as Irons’s character calls it in the first of several lines that make the most of the exquisitely extra dry delivery that is one of the actor’s specialties), but which is actually devoted to “scamming the weakest in our society, stealing everything they have.”
We meet only one, and briefly at that, of “the weak and the vulnerable” that UDG preys on, but it’s a stroke of casting genius to have her played by Phylicia Rashad — the kindliest of kindly old ladies, and just about everybody’s favorite matriarch (African American and otherwise), whether you grew up, like me, on The Cosby Show or only made her acquaintance in the Creed movies.
Yes, this is shorthand, but it’s not lazy; it’s economical, efficient, and remarkably effective. When Clay says that Eloise “was the only person who ever took care of me,” we take it on faith — not because Statham is terribly persuasive, but mostly on account of whom he’s talking about; taking good care of people is exactly what you’d expect the erstwhile Claire Huxtable to do.
You would also expect her to steal her scenes, and Mrs. Rashad doesn’t disappoint. The part where she’s conned out of her life savings (as well as $2 million from a charity of which she was the director) and its immediate aftermath not only provide the plot point at the end of Act I — and with it the main narrative thrust —, but is in and of itself a marvel of pathos.
The rest of the film is devoted to Clay’s (mostly) old-school Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Clearly, he’s more than just a beekeeper; or, rather, he’s a beekeeper in more ways than one (whether apiculture was part of his training or simply a huge coincidence is not clear).
The “protect the hive” metaphor is perhaps a little too on the nose, but introducing the concept of a “queen slayer” is a neat touch (even if the screenplay does neglect to mention that, for that to work like it does in a literal beehive, a new queen must become available first).
And speaking of queen bees, the filmmakers may have gone a little too far with the cloak-and-dagger stuff. As it turns out, the evil chain of command leads, albeit somewhat indirectly, all the way to the President of the USA.
Realistically speaking, a female president is already far-fetched; this one nonetheless managed to get elected in spite of her douchebag, Logan Paul of a son Derek (Josh Hutcherson); on the other hand, it’s implied that she was elected (unbeknownst to her and through shady means) because of Derek.
Also, this is the country that disregarded half-brother Roger when it voted Bill Clinton into office, and which elected once (and might elect again) Donald Trump. All in all, it sucks but Madame President Danforth’s (Jemma Redgrave) gender is definitely the least believable thing about her administration.
Politics aside, the actual problem with this development is that it feels like it’s meant to provide Clay with a second wave of more challenging foes — which it does, except not really. He runs through “former SEAL Team Six, Delta Group,” and other “tier one operators” (“pussies,” Irons rightly calls them) with approximately as much ease as he does security guards and call center operators.
Clay is your standard unstoppable one-man army killing machine, not unlike Steven Seagal; by the same token, The Beekeeper is your standard Action Flick with a Message, not unlike On Deadly Ground.
However, it’s easier to root for Clay (even after it becomes apparent that he’s an Invincible Hero) because Statham isn’t an asshole-coated asshole with asshole-filling, and it’s easier to like The Beekeeper because a) it isn’t heavy-handed or overly preachy, and b) the planet can take care of itself, but when “Someone hurts an older person, sometimes they’re left to face the hornets alone. Because either it goes unnoticed, or no one cares.”
All things considered, The Beekeper is fomulaic, but the formula is well executed: 1) the action isn’t so over the top that it detracts from the seriousness of the issue at hand (and the CGI is kept to a tolerable minimum), nor does it stop dead in its tracks to make room for longwinded lectures;
2) the dialogue is written to play to the strengths of the differente performers, with a laconic but not monosyllabic Statham who gets his point across without falling back on cutesy catchphrases and punny one-liners (true, Wimmer couldn’t resist throwing in a “to bee or not to bee” line, but I’ll let it slide because he gave it to a hulking, brutish henchman), plus a razor-sharp Irons who, as I hinted at above, is wisely assigned the role of resident Deadpan Snarker (at least until he realizes just whom he’s fucking with); and
3) while organized Internet fraud may not be unheard-of as a plot device, I don’t think it had yet been officially upgraded to a well-deserved Evil Inc. Status (incidentally, UDG’s call centers are dark techno-lairs lit only by the glare of computer screens and the glow of indoor neon signs, but I’d say this is more a visual manifestation of these fuckers’ greed than a realistic representation of a phishing boiler room).
Moreover, I get it. I get that the filmmakers decided to involve the government because they feel that the government should be more involved in these matters. And I get that the movie is not advocating unbridled vigilantism as an answer, but using hyperbole to convey its stance on the subject; i.e., that harsher measures are required to crack down on the “hornets,” as Clay would put it.