The Beekeeper: Movie Review

Cast: Jason Statham, Josh Hutcherson, Jeremy Irons, Emmy Raver-Lampman
Director: David Ayer

While beginning like an extended ad warning of the perils of scam sites and clicking on wrongful links on your computer, David Ayer's The Beekeeper soon reveals its shoddy action intentions.

When Statham's Adam Clay finds out the woman who rented him land to keep his bees has committed suicide after being caught in an online scam, he vows one man revenge and sets about burning down the world of those who burned down his friend's world.

But with the FBI in pursuit, and with Clay discovering there is more to the infestation than he first thought, his one man campaign threatens to overturn more than he could have ever believed.

Admittedly pulpy and OTT in parts, The Beekeeper works in some of its action sequences (and one particularly brutal fight toward the end) but on all other levels, it's risible fare.

With laugh out loud dialogue that sees plenty of characters espousing their horror that Clay is just a beekeeper who's trying to protect the hive, and with one on his tail taking the philosophy and ethos of beekeeping from a manual, the film tries to lean too heavily on the symbolic and actually feels like a film in search of some kind of meaning it's too thick-headed to even grasp.

If you're willing to suspend your disbelief there are moments that The Beekeeper works. Given Statham's propensity for action films and his continued presence within fight sequences, there's a grittiness to proceedings that allows for the crunching of bones, the offing of bad guys and the idea of one man outwitting everyone despite being monotone and invulnerable to feel almost plausible at times.

But The Beekeeper never leans into those intentions, preferring instead to go po-faced and feel restrained rather than fully embracing what it really is at heart - a poor man's Wrath of Man set within a scam system.

There's little buzz about The Beekeeper despite well choreographed action sequences, and it's more than inevitable you'll end up being stung by how bad it actually is in parts. Statham feels at times like he's phoning it in rather than imbuing his Terminator-like character with any kind of charisma.

The most frustrating thing about The Beekeeper is the potential that's wasted here - it could have been more than what it was; instead it's an occasionally competent action film that buzzes and subsequently irritates.