The Beekeeper Movie Review and Film Rating | 2024 Jason Statham Action Thriller

Review: While David Ayer’s The Beekeeper is a lot of fun and has some surprisingly effective and exhilarating action sequences that are decked out with every possible way you could break a bone or die, it’s still too odd and ill-conceived to be taken seriously. And for that reason, it’s a perfect Dumpuary movie. Jason Statham stars a rogue special forces agent.

jason statham in the beekeeper film 2024 — Jason Statham in The Beekeeper (2024)

The best thing you can say about David Ayer’s John Wick ripoff starring Jason Statham where the action star gets revenge on an organization for killing his bees and codenamed The Beekeeper is that the movie is exactly what you’d hope a January release would be. It’s no secret that the film industry generally kicks off every new year rather slowly, dumping their less-than-stellar projects towards the front half of the calendar in order to make room for the good stuff (to the point where January and February have been rebranded as Dumpuary), but every so often you get a film that reminds you that not all cheesy action movies are made equal.

Luckily, The Beekeeper is just that, which packs enough slick set pieces and action sequences to make it worth your time. The ceiling for a movie like this will always be low – I mean, how seriously can you take a plot where Statham uses honeybee logic to go rogue on members of the Government at the White House – but at least the film commits to the bit at a comically aggressive level.

Jason Statham has made many drab, forgetful action films trying to find his big franchise outside of Fast & Furious, and while I’m not saying that The Beekeeper is him finally finding that opportunity, the positive reviews suggest this is his best chance. It’s quirkier than Wrath of Man and certainly of a higher quality than The Meg. He’s maybe a bit too understated and directly cloned from Keanu Reeves as John Wick, but his physicality as an actor is on full display.

But I’m not sure there’s much more to be mined in this world given the target of The Beekeeper eventually becomes the President in the Oval Office. It’s tough to make the stakes and scale grander than that. They packed everything they had into this movie, and if the discussion eventually shifts to turning this into an expanded world, it might be hard to find new ground.

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The rest of the cast is pretty interesting here as well. Josh Hutcherson turns in maybe my favorite recent role of his as the President’s shithead son Derek, who spearheads a scamming scheme that causes a close friend of Statham’s Adam Clay to commit suicide.

The deceased’s daughter Verona is played by Emmy Raver-Lampman. I found her characterization to be the weakest link of the film as her motives are rather unclear and cloudy throughout. There’s a staunch lack of support from her behind Adam Clay’s actions, to the point where she’s pigeonholed into being the movie’s muddied second antagonist and biggest threat to Adam. There’s also little emotional connective tissue between Verona and her mother’s passing once the second act begins. It’s only after the climax of the movie that we get some catharsis between Verona and Adam, but at that point, it’s too late.

So while The Beekeeper is a lot of fun and has some surprisingly effective and exhilarating action sequences that are decked out with every possible way you could break a bone or die, it’s still too odd and ill-conceived to be taken seriously. And for that reason, it’s a perfect Dumpuary movie. Certainly not the worst movie I’ve seen all year, but I’m also hoping it’s not the best.

Rating

Genre: Action, Drama, Thriller

Watch The Beekeeper (2024) on VOD here

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