The Beekeeper (2024)

The-Beekeeper-(2024)
The Beekeeper (2024)

To put it mildly, one of the unscrupulous stockbrokers from “The Wolf of Wall Street” had a hand in Jason Bourne’s mother’s bankruptcy. This is the main plot of “The Beekeeper,” whose main character is played by Jason Statham. He portrays a demon-like ex-soldier whose vengeance is wreaked on technologically advanced fraudsters leeching off the internet.

In the film, Statham’s character is Adam Clay, a tough MMA fighter introduced as a contemporary version of The Man with No Name. That is all there is to know about Adam, except that he goes into the woods to make and sell honey as if it were a business, and of course, he is Eric Statham, which means he is a bit different on the mask. He has an elderly friend named Eloise Parker, played by Phylicia Rashad, who has a farmhouse close to him and also rents a part of her barn to him. Elijah, by Adam’s account, is the only one who has ever cared for him. After all, that woman is quite elderly, she falls for a phishing scam by such data-mining companies, which results in the tragic disappointment of having no money in her bank or the non-profit bank she was associated with. Adam decides it’s better to switch from a beekeeper to a commando and vamp the underground ladder, making what the law cannot.

It is unclear how Eloise ended up taking care of Adam and even what he really means in describing her in that way. Perhaps the brightest side of the film is its inability to be analytical, as it is unable to pursue the same question about the identity of the character Adam who has never been fingerprinted and is nothing short of a representative of the state system and yet appears to be some sort of autonomous self-regulating force in the world.

The film is produced by David Ayer, best known for his work on “Suicide Squad” and “Fury,” and seasoned action film and thriller screenwriter Kurt Wimmer, with credits such as remakes of “The Thomas Crown Affair,” “Point Break” and “Total Recall”. It appreciates the virtues of its leading man, who is clearly a man of a physique earned through hard work and does everything from talk to fight to shoot a gun as clearly and straightforwardly as possible.

Statham is one of those stars that draws you into the screen with his presence and he is only getting better with time. This performance expands upon what was already a superb achievement on his part in Guy Ritchie’s film “Wrath of Man,” where he was essentially an idea rather than a man and was trying to transfix the audience by means of that character idea. Statham’s deadpan delivery in ‘The Beekeeper’ makes it worse when Adam simply declares Eloise’s significance to him, just as he casually ponders the structure of the beehive and the need to maintain order in a civilization. The number of action heroes who would be able to say I am sure there is good somewhere in the universe and make you feel that the character thinks so as well as the film is extremely small.

About the bad guys: It’s actually shocking how well they have been cast in the first place considering how many there are. Some notable performances include David Witts as Garnett, the member of the boiler room who actively scams Eloise while boasting about it to a group of junior leeches like a go-getter in Tom Cruise’s 80s movies; Josh Hutcherson as the vice president of the company in charge of the data mining Derek Danforth, who is the coked-up, sleazy son of the President of the United States (Jemma Redgrave); Jeremy Irons as Derek’s superior previously occupying the role of the CIA director Wallace Westwyld, a weary cynic who appears to have just stumbled in from an episode of “Veep”, and Taylor James as a mercenary who ‘just wants’ to kill Adam because he had previously killed someone like him and would like to do it again. They are all foul and/or disgusting in one way or another. Derek is the type of person who would smell like oat milk because that’s what he practically looks like, and Hutcherson always sounds preppy and teenage snot-sounding like too many rich boys do and continue to do even into their fifties. When James’ character starts getting ahead of himself for whatever reason and starts dispensing swear words at Adam, James’s excessive rage causes him to spray a fine mist of saliva.

Irons appears as dressed and stylized for dark humor and psychosexual thrillers, with his tagline being the royal rotter.

What a pity, “The Beekeeper” is not the ignoble trash epic that it comes up implying. There is a lovely pop song here somewhere, one that presumably centered on Adam and the terrible people he is after. But the film is disjointed and frustratingly flippant at points. There is, however, a subplot that has been well performed but is unnecessary. Eloise’s daughter, Verona Parker, an FBI agent played by Emmy Raver-Lampman and Bobby Nader is another character and Verona’s partner who has the desire to apprehend Adam and send him to prison in spite of the fact that there was no evidence in the first place that may have proven Adam is complicit in any crime. This would portray him more like Dr. Richard Kimble who is always in the wrong place at the wrong time. Although the FBI couple has undeniable sexual tensions in their relationship, the comedy in that Dayton and De Marco suffer for their overly casual portrayals of them, as do their amusing encounters during the film but which should make the viewer angry.

Politically and philosophically the movie also wimps out in the end, in Gonzi Kinoshita’s language, the way that a lot of vigilante action flicks wimp out: by telling us that the problem is not world corruption as a core part of the virtue of a nation or of the humankind, but a few wrongdoers without the knowledge or approval of the good pastor. The most socially critical Hollywood genre films are also to surrender this way. They say that, to the rule, there are no practices or political policies from the fact that politics has been embedded in the core of our institutions, it is only a person that is anomalous and his removal will bring back the people’s nobility. There was an option to perform an act that could have been very audacious in this instance, but the film did not take that chance. If there is any dream, working actor who would literally as well as figuratively Burn It All Down, with the audience ever praising you, it is Statham.

Then again at its best, and this is when the actor appears to shine; Jason Statham shooting, maiming, and lighting fire is the absolute peak of the film. “The Beekeeper” thrives as a piece in the vein of its predecessors “Billy Jack’ or even the original ‘Walking Tall’ for that matter. This is about revenge for all the white-collar criminals who hide behind their status and repeatedly abuse helpless people. ‘The Beekeeper’ made me contemplate stealing the lives of people I love after talking about my grandparents who lost everything to scammers and retired cops and guards who wouldn’t even lift a finger to help them. It’s a fantasy about all these innocents being able to pull up in their vehicles, check their mirrors, and have a raging Jason Statham waiting in the back seat.

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