During his directorial career of angst ridden action thrillers, David Ayer has explored the self-loathing brotherhood of war (Fury), the self-loathing brotherhood of super villainy (Suicide Squad) and a spectacularly misjudged look at inner city racism through the iris of self-loathing fantasy folk (Bright); but for his newest opus, Ayer seems to have dropped some of that forced grit to serve up The Beekeeper, an uber glossy Jason Statham vehicle that proves to be his best film in yonks.
Essentially taking one part John Wick, two parts The Equalizer and a sweet, succulent helping of the kind of staggering brutal ultra-violence usually seen in a Gareth Evans flick, The Beekeeper might not offer anything you haven’t already seen before, but it delivers it with such a steady hand that it also proves to give Statham a most impressive neck-breaker in a career recently dominated by giant sharks and Sylvester Stallone.
Adam Clay is a quiet, unassuming – yet weirdly hulking – simple man who keeps himself to himself and spends his time cultivating bees and jarring up their honey on the land of kindly, retired, Massachusetts schoolteacher, Eloise Parker – however, when the elderly lady is targeted by a particularly nasty online scam, she finds literally cleaned out of every single penny she has (including the charity organisation she manages) and in a fit of despair she chooses to take her own life. While this understandably upsets her daughter, FBI agent Verona, this really fucks off Clay who grabs a couple of cans of gasoline and heads out looking for retribution for the old lady who treated him with kindness.
But with all due respect, what exact can a humble beekeeper do about internet fraud? Well, for a start, Clay isn’t just a beekeeper – he’s a Beekeeper, a retired operative of a mysterious, off-the-books organisation that grants their lethal, highly trained operatives full autonomy when taking them to “protect the hive” and the death of Eloise has galvanised him back into action to hit out at the call centre con artists that are preying on people who don’t know how to protect themselves.
Clay first starts by finding the call centre responsible, beating the shit out of anyone who squares up to him and then simply burning the place down, but he has no intention of stopping there. Following the money, the clench-jawed honey man starts moving up the business in the hope of making it to teeth-grindingly brattish technology executive Derek Danforth to cut the head off the snake once an for all. However, not only does he have Verona Parker and the entire FBI on his tail, but he also has to contend with Wallace Westwyld, a former head of the CIA who now acts as Derek’s babysitter and can call all manner of pain down upon our honeycomb-tending avenger. There will be blood? Fuck that, teeth will literally fly out of the screen
There was always a sense that, nine times out of ten, David Ayer’s viciously cynical, streak would tend to derail a perfectly good action thriller with only really his script for Training Day and Fury benefiting fully from his weaponized nihilism. However, in an attempt to replicate the glossy slickness of the type of movies Chad Stahelski and David Leitch have popularised since John Wick chambered his first round, Ayer seems to have found his groove as once all the buzzing dies down, The Beekeeper may well be the most flat out fun actioner of the year.
The key to the matter seems to be that Ayer has found a neat balance between the distrust of authority his movies are usually laced with, but instead of despairing frustration at the injustice of it all, Statham’s anti-hero simply rolls up his sleeves and makes a beeline to the source while neatly skipping over the usual, toxic angst in favour of some truly rousing violence.
There was a danger that Ayer could have taken the morally murky, Death Wish route with this vigilante odessy in order to fully draw out the urban collapse he likes to play in, but instead, the movie slams into fifth gear virtually from the off and instead chiefly keeps its crosshairs tightly on The Stath as he pounds the shit out of smug, pampered con men and their doomed muscle.
As a result, what ensues may be about as feasible as an episode of a G.I. JOE cartoon, but it sure as hell is fun as Statham’s scowling human battering ram cold cocks some extremely punchable villains. While you can argue that targeting online scam artists with lethal force may not exactly be within the remit of the law, it is incredibly satisfying watching Clay riddle one guys face with staples while yanking another one screaming to his death, tethered to the back of a careening pickup truck.
Given a more cartoonish, camp world in which to play in, Ayer impressively let’s his hair down with style, staging some truly bruising action that wears its amusingly spiteful nature on its sleeve like smears of dried blood. Clay doesn’t have to break the dental work of a goon by getting him in a mouth lock with his rifle and he certainly doesn’t have to give another thug a parting shot to the face with a set of brass knuckles after he’s already bled him out with a gargantuan knife, but Ayer understands that it’s these little moments of comic brutality that give an action film its personality.
Elsewhere, the cast embrace their broadly sketched, constantly wisecracking characters in the spirit that they’re conceived with The Umbrella Academy’s Emmy Raver-Lampman in particular sinking her teeth into her federal officer and Josh Hutcherson putting in sterling work as the movies ridiculously slappable antagonist.
However, it’s Statham who puts in the work, making every squint, every nasal snort and every pile-driving right cross count just as much as his sparse dialogue and some soulful stunts of actual beekeeping and he proves to be the perfect anvil for Ayer to bludgeon internet crime with. It ain’t subtle and it certainly ain’t realistic (you mean to tell me that a woman played by Creed’s Phylicia Rashad would immediately blow her brains out after getting scammed without even a single call to the bank or her only daughter?), but when it comes to pulse pounding action with a social bent to it, The Beekeeper just keeps giving, especially in its third act when we find out just how stupidly high Danforth’s protection goes (hint: very fucking high indeed).
Quick, sardonic and packing a punch like a rocket powered boxing glove, The Beekeeper is an action film that awesomely doesn’t hold back when it comes to giving action fans some of the sweet, sweet honey.
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