Review: The Beekeeper (2024)

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David Ayer’s The Beekeeper is one of those gloriously dumb movies that I almost feared they didn’t make anymore. It’s so dumb that the opening 20 minutes had me laughing harder than any comedy this year, despite the fact that the movie is most assuredly not a comedy. In fact, it’s rather self-serious in moments. It follows a former government assassin known as the Beekeeper (played by Jason Statham) who speaks almost entirely in aphorisms about beekeeping, which is ludicrous to the extreme. The movie also makes some rather hamfisted observations about the corruption of power, justice, and (absurdly) elder abuse, making me wonder whether the ludicrous end result is truly in line with the intentions of the filmmaker. Whatever the case, The Beekeeper is fun even if it is bad. It’s a genuinely goofy high concept that executes relentless beatdowns at the hands of a deadpan Jason Statham.

As mentioned above, the beginning is the best part. Phylicia Rashad plays an elderly woman who is renting some barn space to Jason Statham’s beekeeper (he works as a beekeeper but is also a former government Deep State assassin known as a Beekeeper—don’t question the logic of the naming; it’s all very dumb). After chatting with Statham, she goes onto her laptop and gets a suspicious popup ad. Stupidly, she calls the helpline listed, and a slimeball criminal picks up. He ends up telling her that her protection software is out of date and that she’ll need to install the new files to make sure everything is good. She’s confused, doesn’t remember installing software, but she’s bad at the computer, so she goes along and installs the new software. And then he reimburses her the money for the subscription and asks her to check her account to see if the transfer went through. Oh no, it seems he sent $5,000 instead of $500! If she doesn’t send it back, he’ll be fired. So she logs into her bank account and voila, he steals every single cent in every account she has access to, including millions from some charities she operates. She realizes she’s been scammed and collapses in dejected tears. When the Beekeeper returns to bring her some honey, we find out she’s killed herself. And the Beekeeper is out for blood.

The rest of the movie is split between the Beekeeper getting revenge on the scammers and Phylicia Rashad’s daughter, an FBI investigator (Emmy-Raver Lampman), running a parallel investigation from within law enforcement. Their trails eventually lead them to a greasy investor played by Josh Hutcherson, who just so happens to be the son of the President of the United States. Hutcherson is essentially playing Hunter Biden, and channeling every slimeball failson you read about on Twitter to accomplish the task. He’s surprisingly effective in the role, although you feel bad that Hutcherson is required to play such roles after his starring work in The Hunger Games series.

The fact that the bad guy is basically Hunter Biden, the President is a Hillary Clinton type, and Jeremy Irons’ former-CIA caretaker of the President’s son (with an inexplicable Southern accent) is a Deep State parody shows the hand of the film’s politics. But let’s be clear: The Beekeeper isn’t truly about getting revenge on Democrat corruption within American politics. It’s about getting revenge on those who commit elder abuse (although considering the way that the Democrats treated the mentally-deteriorating Joe Biden, perhaps it is about them after all).

Soon after Phylicia Rashad’s character kills herself, Statham’s Beekeeper gives a long speech about how taking advantage of an old person is worse than taking advantage of a child, because children have parents to look out for them while no one in society cares for old people. It’s hilarious and all the more so because Statham delivers it with absolute stoic intensity. Statham has never transitioned into becoming more than a steady action star, but unlike so many of his peers, he never phones it in. Rather, he seems strangely committed to the absurd role, delivering lines like “I need to take care of the hive,” “Sometimes I use fire to smoke out hornets,” and “Sometimes, when the hive's out of balance...you have to replace the queen.” without anything resembling a wink at how bad they are. It’s hilarious, perhaps camp even, but it also makes Statham look good in the process.

He’s not the problem with the movie. Neither is the action, for what it’s worth. Much of The Beekeeper is like a less stylish John Wick, with Statham seemingly invincible and working his way through hordes of henchmen protecting the President’s failson. Some of these henchmen are pretty enjoyable, including a memorable South African nutjob played by Taylor James, but none of them are much of a threat to Statham, who works with single-minded determination (like a bee!) to protect the greater good (like a bee!).

If my description makes The Beekeeper sound fun, it is. But it’s still not good. It spends an inordinate amount of time on a disastrous supporting character, Raver-Lampman’s FBI agent, who is a total buzzkill. I feel bad for the actor, as the character concept and beats are third-rate, but she does herself no favours with some of her line readings. Furthermore, the further into the plot the movie goes, the less sense its screed against the American political establishment makes. Perhaps hoping for sense in a movie about a Deep State hitman called a beekeeper who’s a literal beekeeper is ridiculous on my part, but I’m willing to go with a ridiculous concept if the end result controls its tone. The Beekeeper does not, despite how stupidly funny it can be at times. It’s memorable, at least, often embarrassingly so, which should count for something in this day and age, even if it doesn’t make it a good movie in the process.

4 out of 10

The Beekeeper (2024, USA)

Directed by David Ayer; written by Kurt Wimmer; starring Jason Statham, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Josh Hutcherson, Bobby Naderi, Minnie Driver, David Witts, Michael Epp, Taylor James, Jemma Redgrave, Phylicia Rashad, Jeremy Irons.

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