The Beekeeper review: Predictable Jason Statham actioner lacks buzz

In The Beekeeper, Jason Statham plays, as you may well have surmised, a beekeeper. When we first meet him, this beekeeper is the stoic kind, unconcerned with the world beyond his hive. Even the woman who’s renting him a barn where he harvests his bees’ honey is kept at arm’s length. Soon, though, we learn this beekeeper used to also be, well, another kind of “beekeeper.” And if me saying the film’s title oh so many times in this intro has already irked you enough, worry: for David Ayer’s efficiently directed actioner utters it so many times and exhausts its bluntly delivered metaphor so often that just watching Statham punch and shoot his way out of any scene he’s in becomes an exercise in exhaustion.

Clay (Statham) lives for his bees. He’s methodical in how he cares for them. He wants nothing more than to keep them safe. It’d be a prerogative if it didn’t also feel like a self-imposed mission, a way, perhaps, to turn what used to be his job into a newfound way of life out here in the middle of nowhere. And it’s that previous life that catches up to him when Eloise Parker (Phylicia Rashad), his landlady, winds up dead in her home—a suicide provoked by the sudden loss of all of her money courtesy of a well-orchestrated phishing scam Clay then vows to take down.

He’s well equipped to do so. In his past life, he was a “Beekeeper,” part of a clandestine organization whose sole directive was to keep “the hive” (namely the USA) safe from threats that government branches like the FBI and the CIA couldn’t well handle themselves. Retired now, but driven to avenge his endearing neighbor’s death, Clay taps into his Beekeeper background and begins to wage a knock ’em and sock ’em war against the people scamming the elderly, one call center at a time, slowly moving ever closer to the higher echelons of power where the money then directs him. Also on the hunt for those who helped scam Ms. Parker is her daughter, Agent Verona Parker (Emmy Raver-Lampman), who begins leveraging her FBI skills to try and stop Clay from further causing major destruction (he first burns down an entire call center building) and to figure out who is behind this multi-million dollar operation (hint: this goes all the way up). One wonders why the script never dwells on Agent Parker’s grief, let alone weaves it into a much more textured characterization; she’s reduced to being torn between wanting Clay to get revenge and being saddled with a moral high ground given her employer.

What this means is that The Beekeeper, entranced as it is with honeyed melittological metaphors, tells us time and time again how Clay’s actions protect the “hive,” with the baddies he encounters becoming dangerous hornets he needs to dispose of for the betterment of us all. Outside, of course, of the laws that are in place to deal with such matters: “Until they fail,” Clay tells Agent Parker. “Then you have me.” He’s a vigilante with a moral compass (aren’t they all?) and in this way, this Kurt Wimmer-penned project, much like many of his previous projects (including Salt, Ultraviolet, and Expend4bles) serves mostly as an excuse for highly choreographed action sequences where Statham does what he does best: kick ass. And in that The Beekeeper delivers.

But everything around it is so preposterous and laughable—especially once we meet the two key figures Clay is working his way toward: Josh Hutcherson’s Derek Danforth (a gallivanting spoiled rich kid who’s clearly enjoying his scamming empire) and Jeremy Irons’ Wallace Westwyld (implausibly a former CIA director turned Derek’s erstwhile corporate babysitter). At least Hutcherson is having a ball playing such a lousy douche. Armed with an office skateboard, masseurs, and sound bowl experts, he perfectly captures that kind of compassionless tech bro CEO who believes making money is the be-all and end-all. Irons, on the other hand, is saddled with lines like “When a beekeeper says you’re going to die, you’re dead” with something only slightly resembling a straight face. Elsewhere, Rashad and Minnie Driver (as the very fashionable CIA director) are doing the most with what little they’re given.

Glorifying endless violence as these films tend to do (fingers are severed, limbs are torn, cheeks are pierced, heads are blown), The Beekeeper is exactly what it appears to be. Nothing more, nothing less. But even within that two-dimensional framework—wherein a vigilante seemingly fighting government and financial corruption is set up to be the begrudging good guy we’re supposed to root for, no matter how craven his violent cruel streak may be—The Beekeeper feels stale and rather one-note. The bee metaphors, driven to the ground as they are, become laughable and may well drive you to exasperation as Statham handily defeats endless SWAT teams and FBI agents with little more than his cunning and a pair of fists. It’s all, in the end, much too weightless, with a message that feels tacked on lest we acknowledge how much we’re invested in seeing, yet again, a laconic hero make others bleed and die at his hand. Over and over and over and over again.

The Beekeeper opens in theaters January 12