In The Beekeeper, Jason Statham plays Adam Clay, a literal beekeeper who works on the country estate of Phylicia Rashad’s Eloise.  How Rashad wound up in a Statham kick-punch vehicle I’ll never understand, but she’s a nice presence for as long as she’s around.  One day, Eloise gets a “Your computer is infected with a virus and you must call this number to clear it up” prompt on her laptop.  Like most senior citizens, she doesn’t know it’s a scam and calls the number.  The office she reaches has people wearing headsets and looks like a repurposed strip club, a telltale sign that the operation is not on the up-and-up.  The MO of this techno boiler room is to trick the person on the other end of the line to hand over their login credentials for their savings accounts.  For a movie that leaves reality behind fairly quickly, I have to acknowledge the filmmakers for using a relatable crime as the genesis for this story, and not the usual mobsters and drugs angle.

Mickey Garnett (David Witts), the creepy leader of the dweebs, plays on Eloise’s sympathies until she reluctantly hands over the keys to all of her financial accounts.  Her money vanishes in seconds, including the two million dollar charitable account she oversees for children.  When Eloise realizes what happened, she kills herself.  Adam, who’s been outside the entire time tending to his bees, discovers her dead body when he returns in the evening for dinner.  He calls 911, and the police and the Feds arrive, including Eloise’s daughter, FBI Agent Verona Parker (Emmy Raver-Lampman).

Agent Parker is dubious that her mother would ever let a white guy into her house, let alone a gruff dude like Adam with an English accent.  After an ill-advised arrest, Parker tells Adam that her mother’s suicide was a result of a cyber-scam.  When Parker gives Adam the name of the company who preyed on her mom, Adam promptly retrieves a mobile phone hidden in a beehive (!) and contacts the secret organization he used to work for: The Beekeepers.  Yes, Adam is un-retiring to exact some revenge on Eloise’s behalf.

There’s nothing unique about a Jason Statham character who is a one-man wrecking crew.  And there have been many movies featuring that type of character belonging to a secretive group that pulls the levers of power in the world (Wanted, The Bourne Identity, etc.).  Where The Beekeeper shows ambition is in having its powerful non-governmental organization steeped in  bee-lore.  The Beekeepers are all about maintaining the balance of “the hive”.  (I think hive is analogous to a country, but the movie isn’t clear on that point.)  When the balance of the hive gets out of whack, a beekeeper steps in and does what needs to be done to protect the hive.  A beekeeper could take on the responsibilities of a queen slayer and kill a queen who is producing bad offspring.  (More on that later.)  Of course, seeking revenge goes against established Beekeeper policy, but Adam doesn’t care about waiting for law enforcement agencies to fail in bringing the bad guys to justice.  He’s a Beekeeper and as the movie shows us, he can take care of that himself.

Once his former Beekeeper colleague tells him where the cyber-criminals are based, Adam drives on over to their location in a Boston suburb.  These kinds of criminals are usually based in Russia, Eastern Europe or India, but I’m guessing those locations were beyond the movie’s budget.  When Adam arrives at the shiny office building, nobody takes him seriously because he drives a beat-up truck, wears a ballcap and a worn outdoor jacket.  How could this guy possibly be a threat?  Adam makes quick work of the security staff outside and inside and sets the building on fire.  Mickey calls his boss Derek Danforth (Josh Hutcherson), who tells him the obvious: the one man wrecking crew is probably someone they stole from.  As far as douchebag villains go, Hutcherson does a good job giving Derek a toxic combination of entitlement and arrogance.  Hutcherson actually eclipses his turn as Evil Peeta in the Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2.

Mickey and his thugs locate Adam and shoot up his hives in a tit-for-tat move.  Only the worst of the worst destroy beehives.  Making Claire Huxtable suicidal is one thing, but killing bees?  That’s beyond the pale.  Adam (thankfully) decimates Mickey’s gang, then polishes Mickey off with hilarious brutality.  (Statham should really consider doing physical comedy.)  Derek, now a bit concerned, asks his chief of security to look into the Beekeeper who’s causing all the trouble.  The chief of security is the former director of the CIA and is appropriately named Wallace Westwyld (Jeremy Irons).  (Irons was born to play shifty, powerful men with names like Wallace Westwyld.)  Westwyld calls his former CIA buddies and they tell him about the Beekeepers, an organization that even he didn’t know about.  Later, when Westwyld briefs his assault team about the Beekeepers, we get to hear Irons say all sorts of interesting things about bees in that magnificent voice of his.  I hope someone is inspired by this movie to make a documentary about bees and has Irons do the voiceover.

Apparently when they aren’t kicking ass or beekeeping, the Beekeepers dress to the nines and attend extravagant parties.  This is where we are introduced to Beekeeper Director Janet Harward (Mini Driver–where has she been?).  She offers to remedy the situation by sending a crazy psychopath to take care of Adam, who knocks her out of commission with blazing style.  (Honey is powerful stuff.)  When Westwyld calls Harward back, she says that the Beekeepers have decided to take no position on the conflict.  I guess when you’re the director you can choose your battles.

Adam manages to infiltrate Derek’s company in downtown Boston, where the swarthy manager Rico (Enzo Cilenti) tells him that Derek is at the top and is untouchable.  Does this mean that Adam’s quest for vengeance has met a dead end?  Of course not.  There’s more punching, kicking, stabbing, falling and impaling to do.  Statham eventually fights a tough guy named Lazarus (Taylor James) who sounds like the pirate on Spongebob Squarepants.  The movie ended exactly as I expected it to end, if a tad abruptly.  Perhaps because that is because the filmmakers planned on this move spawning another Statham franchise like Crank, The Mechanic and The Transporter.  I think they’re right.

Since I’ve only seen a handful of Jason Statham’s movies, I have no way of knowing whether The Beekeeper is par for the course for his pure action vehicles.  Like the average Schwarzenegger or Stallone vehicle back in the day, he plays an unstoppable killing machine hell-bent on revenge.    The excitement from this kind of movie is not whether Statham’s character lives or dies, but in watching him mete out justice via increasingly brutal fight scenes.  (Denzel Washington’s Equalizer would nod approvingly.)  While The Beekeeper certainly provides plenty of graphic violence, what elevates the movie above the norm is how it wraps Statham’s character in a kooky bee-oriented mythos that would make Batman’s League of Shadows blush.  There are so many bee puns and analogies in this movie I wonder what they’ll come up with for the inevitable sequel.  All I hope for is that Jeremy Irons will be brought back to speak gravely about the inner workings of “the hive”.  And if Minni Driver also makes another cameo as the fashionable head of the mysterious Beekeepers, all the better.  The Beekeeper is a thoroughly entertaining mix of sincerity, violence and silliness, with Statham affirming once again that he is the last bona fide action movie hero standing.  Recommended.

Analysis

Jason Statham is a movie star.  I had to keep reminding myself of this while watching The Beekeeper.  Even though the man has appeared in over fifty movies, I’m still incredulous of his stardom.  Not because I have anything against Statham.  Including The Beekeeper, I’ve seen eight of his movies and have enjoyed all of them.  If his on-screen persona in any way reflects how he is in real life, I’m sure I’d like him.  Even still, whenever I see one of his movies, I find myself asking, “Really? This guy?”  Yep, the balding, fifty-six year old guy with the thick cockney accent who rarely utters a sentence containing more than five words is a movie star.

As a person who grew up watching action movies in the Eighties and Nineties, I’m very familiar with what Statham is doing.  His on-screen persona aligns with those cultivated by his predecessors, Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Van Damme and Segal.  Statham is a believable tough guy who doesn’t take himself seriously.  He has a sense of humor and can deliver a punchline when required.  When he glowers at someone, you know that person is in for a beatdown.  Most importantly, Statham can convincingly sell a punch or a kick.  There’s a visceral immediacy to Statham’s fight scenes that makes you believe that he really did just kick that bad guy through a pane of glass.  Or that he did just impale that guy with a metal tube.  There is a touch of showmanship to Statham’s action movie moves, but he carefully avoids being flamboyant.  

Statham’s characters are undeniably confident in their abilities and enjoy dishing out punishment, but he’s a reluctant hero.  Maybe that is the secret to Statham’s success.  All of the characters I’ve seen him play are cynical pros who leave their egos at the door when bad guys come calling.  He’s confident that he’ll defeat any number of heavily-armed and ferociously trained bad guys, but he’s never arrogant about it.  The typical Statham character may be an unstoppable one-man wrecking crew, but he keeps it real.  He’d happily join you for a beer at a pub, but if you really want to mess with him, he has no qualms with breaking your arm, leg, neck, etc..

Statham certainly isn’t the first action movie actor to have a remarkably long career playing minor variations of the same character.  Statham knows why people come to see his movies and from what I’ve seen he delivers.  I hope that Statham finds the time for roles outside of his comfort zone every once in a while.  He was hilarious in Spy (2015) and was convincing as a thief in The Bank Job (2008), but those were a while ago.  I liked his turn as the deep sea rescuer in The Meg, where he didn’t punch anyone, not even a shark.  But then the sequel remembered what Statham is famous for and had him doing his punk-kick routine before long.  I’d hate to see Statham end up like Liam Neeson, raising Cain for an ever-shrinking audience.