Actor Jason Statham certainly has not lost his touch when it comes to starring in action-packed thrill rides that excite, captivate, and get your adrenaline pumping. Much like Bruce Willis back in the day, Statham knows how to keep you on the edge of your seat when it comes to the sear amount of crazy and insane fighting techniques that he puts into a scene and makes you wonder “Can anyone stop this force of nature?” This trend continues with his latest film The Beekeeper. It’s an action-packed thriller that hits all the right notes when it comes to a tale of man seeking justice for a fallen friend. So let me tell you the tale of a man who stings back at those who dare to prey upon the weak.
Our story begins with Adam Clay (Jason Statham), a solitary man who maintains beehives on the property of one Eloise Parker (played by Phylicia Rashad). He’s a retired man who only wants to tend to his bees and is grateful to Eloise’s kindness for helping him to fulfill his wish. Each one helping the other, much like bees in a hive working together toward a greater goal.
But one fateful day, Eloise becomes the target of a phishing scam that leaves everything that she has built over her lifetime completely gone, including a children’s charity that she ran her entire career. In her immense grief, she commits suicide. Eloise’s daughter Verona Parker (played by Emmy Raver-Lampman of Broadway fame) discovers her body and the mysterious Mr. Clay, who comes too late to save her. Originally under the suspicion that he was involved with her murder, an investigation is launched, but nothing is turned up on Adam. And when I mean nothing, I mean NOTHING. He has no past to speak of. And when Verona asks, even her friends in the FBI tell her that he’s a ghost. For you see, Adam was retired from a secret, elite, deep ops group known as The Beekeepers, an organization that operate outside U.S. law to correct imbalance when other systems of law and government fail to help keep balance in the United States. It’s a symbiotic relationship, much like how without bees to pollinate flowers, the majority of plants could not thrive, thus jeopardizing all life on Earth. Trust me on this, the knowledge about bees throughout the movie was both interesting and alluded to several major elements in the plot.
With Eloise dead and the head scammer still out there preying on the weak, Adam takes action to hunt down the man who did this and shut his operation down for good. What follows is a catacomb of intrigue and corruption that leads Adam to face powers that want him dead at every turn. Two such powers are spoiled rich kid Derek Danforth (Josh Hutcherson) and former head of the CIA Wallace Westwyld (Jeremy Irons). Wallace looks after Derek at the request of his mother while running her company, Danforth Enterprises. But once he learns of Adam’s existence and his intention to find the man who killed Eloise, shut his operation down and kill him, he too puts his plans into action to stop Adam at all cost.
And I am all for this thrill ride as it was both entertaining and hit all the right high notes when it came to a great action thriller film. Bad guys getting justice at the hands of a lone warrior with nothing to lose? Check. Mysterious mercenaries coming out of the woodwork to try and stop an unstoppable powerhouse? Check. Enough intrigue to keep you informed of what’s going on and setting up some fun twist reveals? Check. It’s got it all. And Jeremy Irons too, who gives such an excellent performance that he steals the show every time he’s on screen.
I could tell watching that director David Ayer truly gave a sincere effort in making The Beekeeper. I will be honest dear readers; I personally was not a fan of his film Suicide Squad for various reasons, especially in the writing department. But some of those creative decisions were out of his hands, as Warner Bros. requested further reshoots that drastically changed his original vision and tone of the movie. Although I do blame Ayer for recommending the tattoos that Jared Leto’s Joker had in the film. A terrible call in my opinion, but I digress.
Since 2016, Ayer has clearly learned a lot from Suicide Squad and returned back-to-basics, which is not a bad thing. Here you can tell on screen that he focuses more on the directing & action scenes, while letting writer Kurt Wimmer handle writing duties. And it clearly shows in the final product, mainly because of Jason Statham’s guidance and teaching Ayer more about the craft of stunt work & action performance. Through their collaboration, Ayer gained new knowledge and a deeper respect for Statham’s no-nonsense attitude & strong work ethic that he even admitted that he was “schooled” by Statham, according to an interview from MovieWeb. Statham himself has said that he is very passionate about action cinema, which combined with his Executive Producer role helped to elevate this film higher.
This really opened my eyes and changed my perspective of Ayer as I wrote this review, as a true director is always learning from each experience that they have making each film. And seeing Ayer humbling himself and admitting that he learned more about action cinema and stunt work from a top tier talent like Statham really showed me that not only he was learning, that he wanted to become a better action director. And with that, maybe one day we will see another action film come close to or even be on same the level of the 1988 action classic Die Hard from Ayer. Wishful thinking for sure, but a man can dream.
Once again, Jason Statham is a one-man army who powerhouses his way through hoards armed thugs, mercenaries and even fighting off an FBI SWAT Team. He is amazing to watch on screen as always in his fight choreography. A true marvel in today’s movie making scene. His fight scenes thrilled and excited me. From him using a telephone cord to strangle a guy to torturing another with a stapler, I always got a kick out of the creativity he had with each fight and what he was going to do next. And I can say this for sure: it’s like Statham took all his various movie incarnations over the years, took some of the best parts from each one and then cranked them to the next level. And it shows. And if this is what he’s like as an Executive Producer with more creative control, I want to see more of it.
The action scenes overall are well shot and choreographed. One scene in particular that I enjoyed was him escaping a gang of former ex-special forces hired by Wallace Westwyld, only to be tricked into an elevator. I’ll leave it to your imagination what happens next. But there was one scene when Adam is fighting off the FBI SWAT Team that I did feel could have been better handled, as I could see several extras waiting their turn to gang up on Statham’s character to fight him. I was getting some bad flashbacks from Last Airbender when it came to that fight choreography, and that was not a good thing. But it did not completely destroy my immersion, as once he entered back into the office building, things picked up.
Some may say that the lead scammers running these call centers were cartoonishly over-the-top. And personally, I can see that. But I can also see that they themselves think that they are untouchable and above the law. They are criminals who have walled themselves off from society and have built their own kingdom where they rule over all the peons who work underneath them. Their flamboyant personas are a result of their own arrogance, greed, and pride. They only serve those who fund their paycheck and encourage their workers to keep funneling the money from all the poor people who continue to become victims by their disgusting & predatory phishing scams. And it was so cathartic and satisfying to see these scammers finally getting what was coming to them as Adam physically pummeled them one at a time, torching their buildings and wreaking havoc across their neon-soaked mission control centers.
The character of Adam Clay is a man with several layers to him. He firmly believes in justice, order, and retribution when those moral lines are crossed by those who think that they are above justice. He firmly believes in justice to his core, which never wavers throughout the film, which I highly respected. I also admired that he does have a moral compass where he does not want to harm anyone if it can be helped, giving those who have done wrong one chance to walk away and never wrong others again. But he will use lethal force if provoked and has no other options.
While Verona was not as deep of a character as I thought she would become, I did like her overall. She wanted to capture the man who scammed her mother and had no tolerance for scammers. She had a personal stake in the case. And as she learns more about Adam and his Beekeeper organization, she begins to see where he is coming from in his worldview and begins to sympathizes with him. She compliments Adam well, as she is on the opposite side of the same coin as he is. While Adam is the renegade who has no issue with taking the law into his own hands, Verona believes in the law, even trying to reason with him at one point that without the rule of law what is the point of having it. To which he explains that when the law fails, that’s when people like him step up and set things right. It’s a compelling dynamic.
Some of my favorite action/fight scenes go to Statham schooling a newly recruited Beekeeper dressed as if she stepped out of a cyberpunk movie, to him torching his first illegal call center and ultimately dealing with the scammer who conned Eloise out of her life savings, to the climatic finale with a mercenary who was hellbent on seeing Adam dead. The third act of the film was a major highlight, with a climax that keep me on the edge of my seat.
I honestly wanted to know more about this mysterious Beekeeper organization. And hopefully if this film does well, we may get a deeper look into their world in a possible sequel. And hopefully we will learn more about Adam Clay’s backstory, as I am curious what kind of life he had prior that lead him to embrace justice to the point that he was willing to die for it.
And on a personal note, it was nice to see another mid-budget movie finally making it to the big screen and gaining positive traction from the general public. Hopefully we will see more mid-budget films like this be made in the future.
Overall, I really liked this movie a lot. It’s a very entertaining action-thriller that delivers the goods when it comes to the mayhem, the pure action, the suspense, and the vengeance toward all scammers who think that they are above justice. So go check it out!
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