@Photo by Amazon MGM Studios – © 2023 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. All Rights Reserved.
In a world where there is a dearth of deep and soul searching films to move and impact an audience in more than just a lane of entertainment, there still needs to be pure entertainment. When it comes to action films, John Wick has certainly held its ground as the forerunner for modern action thrills. And while all major cities world wide containing large hotels worth of well trained and skilled hitmen might be hard to believe, it works in the world the production builds. On the other end of the spectrum, The Beekeeper doesn’t understand what world it lives in and leaves a mess of stupidity in its wake.
Adam Clay (the always entertaining Jason Statham) leads a quiet and lonely life. He rents a barn from Eloise Parker (the ever ageless Phylicia Rashad) where he uses a bit of her land for keeping his bees. Eloise is the only person that treated Adam kindly, and he is ever appreciative for it. So, when Eloise commits suicide after being scammed by a local call center that cleans out all her bank accounts, Adam takes it personally.
Though he might seem like a shy and reserved beekeeper, Adam is actually a retired specialist from a government agency known as The Beekeepers. He is going to take all his training and all his hidden resources to take out the people who hurt Eloise and other people like her who fall for these predatory scams. These fools have no idea what is coming for them, and there is no escape for them, either.
High art or even a cohesive story weren’t part of my expectations when walking into The Beekeeper. Nutty action and Jason Statham enacting his retribution was all that was expected. Yet, the pieces that create this tale are so poorly assembled that it creates nothing but disdain. The dialogue and plot of the opening situation that puts these events in motion are more like a badly thrown together Tik Tok post than a big budget Hollywood feature.
@Photo by Amazon MGM Studios – © 2023 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. All Rights Reserved.
You’ve been there before. You’re scrolling through your feed only to find a clip of some made for the web mortality tale where the snotty, uptight, racist salesman ignores the guy who looks like he dresses in clothes he found on the street and pays attention to the fancy business man in the store. Only to find out the businessman has no money and the kid he has been rude to is a billionaire who carries $10 million in cash on him…that is about all the subtleness and finesse The Beekeeper had; none.
When you finally get a bit of information on The Beekeeper organization, even less sense is thrown into the mix. The organization runs off a single room of 3 or 4 women running software off 1980’s Apple Mac IIs with landline phones and service (except for a single satellite phone for some reason), and they can find impossible to track down information about a subject with little to go on but the name of a victim faster than any other agency in the world.
When news of Adam Clay’s rampage gets out, the current Beekeeper who took his place is sent after him to shut him down. Now, seeing how much of a ghost Clay is, you figure a Beekeeper needs to be smart, gifted, not easy to identify. Then the new Beekeeper rolls up in a neon purple pick up with a minigun in the truck bed. She’s sporting the same neon tinted clothing, wearing 10 inch heels and multicolored mohawk and just starts opening fire. Yeah, that person is evading detection for all of 5 seconds. Nothing in this plot makes any sense. It is all cobbled together pieces of childish garbage that someone thought was cool and then glued together and sent out to market. Even the exposition is crapped out of such putrid rates; it’s undermining.
I could go on and on about the poor decision making of every character from agents who don’t take open and clear shots to take Clay down, to the decision to not tell certain parties the whole story leaving your finale to take place at a huge soiree where you invited more victims and more people for Clay to blend in with. Let’s also not forget the pathetic jerk-off call centers they created where people talk over PA systems about how they are ripping people off while other people are on the phone ripping people off. Does no one on the other end go, “Hey, why is there a voice louder than yours talking about ripping me off?”
The actors do their best to deliver the sub-par dialogue they’re asked to actually say. I feel bad for Phylicia Rashad, that she had to utter such nonsense. She does her best to make it sound like reality, but nothing can save these words from failing. Statham is fine at what he always does, but the character basically shows no vulnerability till the very end. Otherwise he is a superhero. Jeremy Irons is Jeremy Irons, so no need to go there. And Josh Hutcherson does just enough to take what others would treat like a cartoon and make him semi-real.
There is a lot to be said for a film that can make someone enjoy the theater through pure madness and action, but The Beekeeper is not it. The full film is just as silly and moronic as the previews make it out to be.
@Photo by Amazon MGM Studios – © 2023 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Final Grade: D