The Beekeeper

dir: David Ayer

2024

O Lordy, lordy. Spare me from such terrible times.

This fucking flick – it’s pretty fucking stupid. I guess that’s okay, but it’s almost comically, aggressively average, and grimly humorless to boot.

Jason Statham, once again, plays a guy with all the killing skills, who was content living a quiet life tending to bees, but then something happened and he had to kill about a thousand people in order to get revenge, sorry, I meant to say ‘justice’.

This is not Jason Statham’s first rodeo. He has literally played this role dozens of times already. And he’ll probably play it again for another 10 years before he gets tired of it. Although, honestly, he’s in his mid-fifties already, maybe do something different for a while? Might I suggest beekeeping?

There is something uniquely boring about the way the action is done in this flick. Most of the flick is Statham killing or punching or punch killing people who might as well have been mannequins in a mannequin warehouse. The people behind this flick think they’ve learned new lessons from the John Wick flicks in that they want to see someone besting hundreds of foes over the course of a bloated running time, but this flick has none of the flair or the inventiveness that goes into a lot of that stunt work and fight choreography. They felt they should skip that and just have Staham killing countless faceless minions in dull and grim ways. There is one decent knock-down-drag-out towards the end of the flick between Statham and some one-legged Afrikaner goon, but that’s it.

That’s a few competent minutes out of about a hundred minute movie.

There is also (although this aspect I find hilarious) a strange and goofy generational hatred and contempt theme running through this flick. This flick has the guts to say: Young people, you ain’t shit.

There are entire scenes where it’s basically Statham violently trying to convince young people to respect their elders, and maybe to eat their vegetables as well.

I guess the older people get in the film industry, the more they resent the youth of today for their youthfulness, for their obliviousness, for their callousness, for their wokeness. Wait a sec, I’m getting myself caught up in it against my will.

Setting aside the reason for why Statham’s character starts killing everybody, which is even more tenuous than someone stealing his car or killing his dog, the world that’s posited here is one in which there can be a guy somehow given a greenlight by the US government to pretty much kill whoever he feels like for whatever reasons possible, if he can get away with it, I guess.

These people are The Beekeepers. American society is a hive, and the beekeepers are given the special set of skills and resources to kill whoever if it’s for the good of the hive.

What a truly stupid analogy. It’s…so fucking stupid, and lacking in real world accuracy or creativity. Bee hives in nature operate completely independent of apiarists or beekeepers or other weirdos who get their kicks from wearing those bulky white suits. Soldier bees within hives kill intruders or infected bees in order to maintain the health of the hive.

But I guess The Little Soldier Bee wasn’t going to fly as a title.

Wouldn’t it have been cute to see Jason Statham dressed up as a bumblebee throughout the flick, playfully trying to sting opponents with his rear end?

It would have been the most delightful film since Paddington 2.

Instead we have Jeremy Irons, Jeremy Fucking Irons, explaining to a young vaping idiot (Josh Hutcherson) that he’s gone and fucked up something terrible, and raised the ire of the most terrible killer of killers that the world has ever seen.

I mean, he stops short of saying, with his truly unconvincing American accent, that John Wick has nightmares of Beekeepers coming to get him.

How is it, that after all these years, after all this acclaim and money, Jeremy Irons still can’t do a convincing American accent? Has…has anyone told him? Dared to tell him how terrible it sounds?

Young people, and their lack of respect for old people, is what really kicks proceedings off. The beekeeper lives on a rural property somewhere, with a lovely old lady played by the great Phylicia Rashad as his landlady. Some scammers scam the nice old lady out of all her money, over the phone, and by convincing her to install some malware. Within seconds of realising what’s happened, like any red-blooded American, she immediately shoots herself, and dies.

Jeez, that’s a bit extreme. She could have at least talked to someone about her problems. I mean, she even has a daughter in the FBI, you think she might have talked to her about it and seen if there was a way to try and get the money back.

No, no, it’s better if I just die, she thinks, and then thinks no more.

The FBI agent daughter is only in this flick to almost catch the Beekeeper as he does his beekeeping thing, and to begrudgingly understand how great he is in order to reluctantly help him or let him go, depending on circumstances.

Da Beekeeper easily finds out who scammed his landlady, then goes to the call centre staffed entirely by young people, and then kills people and torches the place, but not before making the young people repeat after him, with all the enthusiasm of a fourth-grade primary school class on a rainy afternoon “I will never steal from the weak and the vulnerable again”.

From there it’s a rapid escalation in the frequency of killings until he follows the unlikely path upwards through all the echelons of scamming and corporate power in order to threaten the very presidency itself. For, you see, just so the dialogue can make all the fucking puns and references to bees and beehives, well, if the US is a hive, there has to be a queen bee at the top. And thus the president is played by Jemma Redgrave.

Doctor Who fans might know her as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, the wonderful Brigadier, and daughter of the previous Brigadier (the character, not the actor) from the Tom Baker years, but then I can’t imagine a lot of Doctor Who fans sitting through a piece of shit like this. They’re better than that.

I’m not though, which is why we’re here. I mostly found it dull and uninvolving. Most of the humour I found came from stuff being unintentionally funny, and the faux serious way they talk about this fucker throughout the movie is just groanworthy. This is genuinely one of those artless, mindless flicks where everyone involved is there solely to pander to the ego of the central actor, rather like the main character. It’s like joking that, whenever the Beekeeper isn’t onscreen, everyone should be saying “Where is the Beekeeper? What’s he going to do next? Why is the Beekeeper so wonderful and awesome?”

Don’t any of these other people have lives, or inner lives? Hopes, dreams, disappointments, longings? Nah, there just there to die or be cheerleaders for our grim as fuck Beekeeper.

Action-wise, it’s not great, it’s not artful, but I guess if you just like watching one guy kill a lot of people it will fulfil a need.

The idea that there would be a lunatic running around killing people at will, and that it would be part of the government itself, is pretty ludicrous. Americans shoot each other every day without regard for the safety of the hive – they all think they’re delivering justice. And generally they get gunned down in kind.

The system works. This is still a dull film, which doesn’t need a sequel, because I have no doubt Jason Statham’s next film will have him killing hundreds of people for some other reason as well, with no honey references whatsoever.

5 reasons why this flick should be avoided at all costs out of 10

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“I'm a Beekeeper. I protect the hive. Sometimes I use fire to smoke out hornets.” – pipe down old man - The Beekeeper