The Beekeeper

I’m not convinced that Jason Statham has ever existed in a form other than self-parody. He’d only had a couple leading roles when he starred in Crank, a movie which I remember being fantastic in its insanity, but not exactly taking itself (or action movies more broadly) very seriously. As soon as you tell someone Jason Statham is in some movie, you know more or less what you’re in for. It’s gonna be big, it’s gonna be loud, and it’s gonna be dumb.

The Beekeeper does exactly nothing to disabuse you of that notion.

He stars as Adam Clay, a beekeeper living in a barn belonging to Eloise Parker (Phylicia Rashād) and raising bees. When he comes to join her for dinner, he finds her dead from self-inflicted gunshot wound. A quick look around reveals that earlier that day, all of her bank accounts were drained, including the $2 million account of a charity she ran: she’d been the victim of a computer scam. When her daughter shows up, FBI Agent Verona (Emmy Raver-Lampman), Adam learns the group has been known for some time, but is very difficult to track. Lucky for him, he has some contacts (whom he reaches via a walky-talky pulled out of a bee hive!) who easily put him onto the scent, so the game is on.

And…that’s kind of it. What follows is Adam stalking various tech bro call centers with lots of flashing lights and an MC (you know - a call center), punching his way through their heavily armed security like tissue paper. His contacts make his target of finding their bosses and their boss’ bosses pretty simple, removing any intrigue or need for him to investigate. He basically just says “I need to find so and so”, and he’s there, engaging in some boring and tension-free fighting. Not to mention constantly halting everything to turn to camera and announce that internet scams to steal money from retirees is wrong, as if the writer was a victim himself and thinks the perpetrators are watching.

The filmmakers know that what’s transpiring with Adam isn’t particularly interesting, so we spend a ton of time with other characters and plot lines to flesh out the world. They’re mostly completely useless, despite us constantly returning to them as if they’ll come into play at some point. We’ve got Josh Hutcherson as Derek Danforth, CEO of the company behind this chain of ransomware call centers (which isn’t how any of that works, but whatever), who’s just yelling at Wallace (Jeremy Irons) to clean up this mess, and Wallace yelling back about how “If a beekeeper says you're dead, you're dead”. We’ve got Agents Verona and Agent Matt (Bobby Naderi) investigating the call centers and getting nowhere, before they turn their sights towards the Beekeepers. We’ve got Derek’s mom Jessica (Jemma Redgrave), who’s clearly a high powered politician, and trying to prevent this from becoming a problem. And we also spend plenty of time with the individual call center bros.

All of this signals just how convoluted the world-building is, none of which matters. And I haven’t even talked about the Beekeepers yet, because I want to let you discover that for yourself.

Given all the distinct plot lines, you can probably guess that the movie has a humongous problem focusing, which more importantly means it doesn’t lean into anything hard enough. From the get go, this is a ridiculous premise, but that can totally still work if you embrace it and go all out. There are a few moments of brilliance, such as an absurd encounter at a gas station, that hint at the possibility of the much more fun and excitingly schlocky version of this idea. But everything is so muddled and relatively grounded that it’s never allowed to actually hit its stride. Instead, they just insert Statham into a world made of dudes waiting to be punched, and everything around him is just boring window dressing.

The movie’s only shining throughline is its insistence on constantly using bee puns and metaphors. Not that any of them are any good. Absolutely not. But they’re cheesy as hell, especially the ones they just drop without calling your attention to it. The connecting of Adam’s behavior to that of bees, and the metaphor of America as a beehive, is complete and utter nonsense, but it’s kinda a fun idea in it corniness. I admire their commitment: it’s the only thing they stick to in any meaningful way.

This is the most frustrating type of movie. One where you can feel the potential, and they make the opposite decision at every single opportunity. Too messy to be a popcorn flick, too boring to enjoy the action, too dumb for its message to have any sort of weight. Far from being the bee knees, it’s just got nothing buzzing around its head to make it worthwhile.