Review by C.J. Bunce
Revenge is a dish best served by Jason Statham.
From Fury and The Tax Collector writer-director David Ayer and Ultraviolet and Sphere screenwriter Kurt Wimmer, comes Jason Statham’s latest action flick, The Beekeeper. It’s another B-level Statham showcase, a good couple hours for anyone wanting a solid 1980s-style revenge flick of the Chuck Norris variety, and the kind we’ve seen from Statham before. The twist is that the bad guys are those particularly loathsome data hackers who drop dire warnings on your computer, targeting the elderly, more than frequently successful at scamming people out of their life savings. Like the rest of the entries in the trope, the circumstances are improbable, but that doesn’t mean this quick-paced film isn’t also totally satisfying.
With a notable supporting cast including Jeremy Irons, Phylicia Rashad, Jemma Redgrave, and Minnie Driver, how can you pass it up?
Statham plays a beekeeper living on the property of an elderly woman played by Rashad. When she commits suicide after being scammed out of a few million dollars, her FBI daughter Agent Verona Parker, played by Emmy Raver-Lampman (Umbrella Academy), shows up, and both she and Statham go after the bad guys. Only they don’t work together. She takes a by-the-book approach, and he chooses to snap necks and burn down the $30 million call center, one of nine used to work the scam. A fail of the plot is Parker not joining and working with Statham’s beekeeper. But it’s only one of the misses that pass viewers by as the story clips along. All-in the movie covers about three days, which makes Statham’s character a heckuva planner, even as an ex-government operative.
Statham’s beekeeper status isn’t apparently just about keeping bees. It turns out an organization under a former CIA director, played by Jeremy Irons, was one of those Seal Team Six type squads, only this was even outside that, one of those double secret things. Called the Beekeepers, they took their preservation of the nation seriously, and they’d break the law to do it. Irons works for the President and her son, so he’s charged with taking down Statham. He tries to employ an unnamed character played by Minnie Driver in a cameo role, but she’s no help. The beekeeping group concept gets a bit hokey, but it’s the story hook. Statham snuffing out bad guys is why viewers will show up.
The Hunger Games’ Josh Hutcherson is the young entrepreneur at the top of the data mining criminal organization, a wimpy sniveling type who happens to be the son of the U.S. President, played by the actor behind Doctor Who’s own head of UNIT, Jemma Redgrave.
The good news, and what any Statham fans know they’ll get, is a solid comeuppance for the bad guys. One of the goofier thugs has a Scottish accent and gets into an abbreviated They Live-inspired fight scene with Statham at a Camp David substitute. Still, count this at the top of the White House Down, Air Force One-type genre, better than the Harrison Ford and Clive Owen stories because it skips over the drama and gets right to the Statham revenge action.
Statham fans know who you are. This is for you. The Beekeeper is streaming now on Prime Video.
