Imagine that one of the boiler room scumbags from “The Wolf of WallStreet” bankrupted Jason Bourne’s mother. That’s more or less the starting point of “The Beekeeper,” which stars Jason Statham as a wraithlike ex-commando who metes out Old Testament vengeance against tech bros who use the latest inventions to rob people online.
Statham’s character is named Adam Clay, an MMA upgrade of Clint Eastwood’s The Man with No Name.We don’t know anything about Adam except that he lives out in the country raising bees and selling their honey, and that he’s played by Statham, which means he’s no ordinary beekeeper. Hisbest friend is an older woman named Eloise Parker (Phylicia Rashad), who lives in the farmhouse near his andrents him space in her barn. According to Adam, Eloise is the only person who ever took care of him. Eloise makestheterrible mistake of responding to a phishing scam from a data mining companythat empties her bank account as well as the account of a nonprofit she helped found, leading to tragedy. Adam trades his beekeeper uniform for commando gear and disguises, andworks his way up the criminal food chain, doing what the law won’t.
We don’t know exactly how Eloisecame to take care of Adam, much less precisely what he means when he describes her that way.It’s to the film’s credit that it never elaborates, just as it never elaborates on who Adam was before he became a super-duper extra-secret commando who has never been fingerprinted andexists outside of every known governmental structure and seems (from other characters’ descriptions) to be sort an agent of self-regulation for society.
The film is the brainchild of directorDavid Ayer (“Suicide Squad,” “Fury“) and veteran action film and thriller screenwriter Kurt Wimmer (who wrote or co-wroteremakes of “The Thomas Crown Affair,” “Point Break” and “Total Recall”). It appreciatesthe virtues of its leading man, who appears to have come by his muscles honestly, anddoes everything from dialogue to martial arts to gunplay as simply as possible.
Statham isthe kind of leading man who makes you lean forward in your seat, and he’s gotten better with age. This performance builds on his superbwork in Guy Ritchie’s “Wrath of Man,” which also presented himwith the challenge of riveting an audience’s attention while playing a character who was more of an idea than a person. Statham’s matter-of-fact minimalism in “The Beekeeper”makes it all the more moving when Adam tersely speaks of how much Eloise meant to him, or waxes philosophical on the organization of the beehive and the necessity of ensuring a functioning society. There aren’t toomany action heroes who could deliver a line like “I believe there’s good in the universe”and not only make you believe that the character believes it but that the film believes it.
A word about the bad guys: It’s genuinely impressivehow well-cast they are, especially considering their number. Standouts includeDavid Witts as Garnett, the boiler room leader who personally bilks Eloise, narrating his conquest to a room full of junior vultureswith the brio of a Tom Cruise-style ’80sgo-getter;Josh Hutcherson asthe data mining company’s vice presidentDerek Danforth, the spoiled, sleazy, coked-out son of the president of the United States (Jemma Redgrave); JeremyIrons as Derek’s boss, former CIA directorWallace Westwyld, an exasperated cynic whoseems as ifhe wandered in from “Veep”; and Taylor James as a braying wanker of amercenary who brags that he once killed a guy like Adam and can’t wait to do it again.They’re all morally and/or physically revolting. Derek looks like he’s been marinating in oat milk, and Hutcherson reads his lines in that preppie teenage snot voice that a lot of trust fund boys never lose even when they enter their fifties.When James’ charactergets worked up while denigrating Adam, he spits misty plumes of saliva. Irons is dressed and lit to exaggerate theroyal rotter look that made him so perfect in 1990s black comedies, psychosexual thrillers and horror flicks.
It’s a real shame that “The Beekeeper” isn’t the righteous trashmasterpiece that it keeps threatening to turn into.There’s a great pop hitin here somewhere—probably one thatfocused exclusively on Adam and the awful peoplehe’s going after.But thefilm isscattered and annoyingly glib at times. There’s awell-acted but ultimately unnecessarysecondary plot about Eloise’s FBI agent daughterVerona Parker (Emmy Raver-Lampman) and her partner Matt Wiley (Bobby Naderi), who want tocatchAdam and put him in jaileven though Verona’s initial theory about his complicity is instantly proved wrong. It seems as if she should recognize him as more of a Dr. Richard Kimble-type. The FBI duo has undeniable chemistry, but the buddy cop comedy riffingin their scenes undercuts Verona, who should be as furious about and focused onwhat happened to her mother as Adam is.
Worse, politically and philosophicallythe movie wimps out in the end, in the way that a lot of vigilante action flicks wimp out: by reassuring us that the problem isn’t systemic corruption baked into the national character or the human species, but a fewbad apples doing bad stuff without their well-meaning boss’s knowledge or approval. Even the most socially critical Hollywood genre films tend to lose their nerve in this way. They tellus that the problem is not systemic and purposeful corruption embedded in the marrow of our institutions, but anomalous people whose removal will restore things to their natural state of nobility. There was an opportunity to do something truly bold here, but the movie didn’t take it. If there’s any working actor who could literally as well as figuratively Burn It All Down and bring audiences to their feet cheering, it’s Statham.
Still, at its best, which is when Statham dominates the screen, shooting and maiming bad guys and setting gigantic fires, “The Beekeeper” is a work in the spirit of “Billy Jack” and the original “Walking Tall.” It’s a fantasy about howsatisfying it would be to brutalize and killthe sorts ofwhite-collar crooks who prey on innocent people without fear of punishment.Watching “The Beekeeper”made me think about the elderly people in my life who have beenvictimized by scam artists, estate predators, and other swindlers, and the police and court officerswho refused to lift even a pinky to help get justice for them. And how satisfying it would be for all of themto get into their cars, glance at their rearview mirrors, and see JasonStatham in the back seat.
