There Are Just So Many Bee Puns in Jason Staham’s ‘The Beekeeper’

Jason Statham has been a transporter, a mechanic, a killer elite, an expendable, and a spy (as well as a lock, stock, and smoking barrel), but he takes on his most buzzworthy role to date—get it?—with The Beekeeper (in theaters Jan. 12), a derivative B-movie that returns the star to the macho environs he thrives in best. A transparent John Wick knock-off from director David Ayer (Suicide Squad) and writer Kurt Wimmer (Sons of Anarchy) that delivers its vigilante violence with a self-seriousness that’s at odds with its absurdity, it’s a beat-’em-up whose competent fight sequences are ultimately overshadowed by its unintentional humor.

After carefully bagging up a hornet’s nest, Adam Clay (Statham) is dubbed “a blessing” by his elderly neighbor Eloise (Phylicia Rashad) for bringing light back into her home and life. Clay is a grim badass of few words who cares about Eloise, so he’s none too pleased when he revisits her house that evening to gift her some fresh honey collected from his beehives and discovers that she’s killed herself. Eloise’s FBI agent daughter Verona (Emmy Raver-Lampman) catches Clay at the scene and suspects that he’s a murderer, but additional sleuthing clues them into what the film has already shown us. Namely: that Eloise was the victim of a canny phishing scam orchestrated by Garnett (David Witts), a weasel who lords over his giant high-tech control room—full of neon lights, panoramic digital screens, and banks of computers and phones manned by heartless minions—like a Vegas nightclub MC.

The Beekeeper imagines data-mining scams as glitzy ventures run by callous white-collar cretins, and while that doesn’t come across as very realistic, it’s no more outlandish than the rest of the proceedings. Once Clay’s name is cleared and he learns about the phishing con, he gets down to grim business, showing up at Garnett’s base of operations with two gas tanks in hand, announcing to anyone he meets that he plans to burn the place to the ground. Clay admirably proves himself a man of his word, although by that point, it’s already apparent that he means what he says, given that most of what comes out of his mouth are bee-related metaphors and statements of fact. “I take care of bees,” he growls early on. Later, he announces. “I’m a beekeeper. I protect the hive.” Veronica quickly grasps this fact, stating, “He’s protecting the hive, sir. It’s what beekeepers do.” This is, she understands, his mission: “to keep the hive safe.” His adversary also gets it, remarking—about the fact that Clay is called a beekeeper—“that’s like his whole brand or whatever.”

Whatever indeed. The Beekeeper cannot stop saying “beekeeper,” “hive,” “hornet’s nest,” “smoke them out,” and “queen,” such that it often seems to have been designed from the ground-up as a punishing drinking game. Its repetitiveness hilariously peaks when a hired assassin holds Clay at gunpoint and, before pulling the trigger, states, “To bee or not to bee”—a moment that’s so patently ridiculous, it’s amazing Statham manages to maintain a straight face. Throughout, the headliner grimaces with one-note severity, all while decked out (until the finale) in a scruffy beard, a flannel shirt, and a baseball cap. He’s an assuming and intensely intimidating killing machine, and as it turns out, beekeeping isn’t just his hobby; rather, he’s a retired Beekeeper, a top-secret super-soldier position that was created in order to protect civilization from any and all threats. Why the government would give an unstoppable commando carte blanche to do as he (or she) pleases is a question not worth pondering; what matters is that Clay, having retired as a Beekeeper, opts to go rogue in order to avenge Eloise’s death.

The target of his wrath is Derek (Josh Hutcherson), a cocky tech bro who skateboards through an office featuring a sushi chef, meditation experts, and employees who massage his head as he receives manicures. He’s an entitled millennial punk, and he’s partnered with Wallace (Jeremy Irons), the former head of the CIA, who’s been hired by Derek’s mother to make sure the scion keeps himself out of (further) trouble. Unlike Derek, Wallace is familiar with the Beekeeper project and immediately tells Derek that his days are numbered. However, given that it’s his job, Wallace hires lots of Navy SEAL and Delta Force veterans to take down Clay. When those mercenaries invariably fail, things escalate and Derek’s mother becomes embroiled in the burgeoning crisis, and The Beekeeper elicits a hearty laugh from the revelation of this woman’s true identity—a bombshell that’s accompanied by a fantastically exaggerated sound cue and is in keeping with the over-the-top silliness of the entire enterprise.

Minnie Driver pops up briefly as a CIA bigwig who flops in her effort to stop Clay, allowing the Beekeeper to eventually infiltrate a swanky—and heavily guarded—soiree where he faces off against a villain in a skirmish embellished with the Dolby-ified sounds of crunching glass and bodily squelching. Clay is so single-minded in his undertaking that he’s comfortable pummeling, maiming and killing any federal agent foolish enough to stand in his way, which is ostensibly okay because he’s dishing out the “justice” that can’t be attained by adhering to “laws.” Of course, his rampage begins a single day after Eloise’s demise, so it’s not like he gives the system a chance to handle this mess on its own terms. Still, worrying about such particulars is as pointless as Wimmer’s writing is subtle. This is standard-issue nonsense, and what keeps it watchable is Ayer’s glossy widescreen visuals and Statham’s righteous ferocity—as well as his swift and brutal combat maneuvers.

If The Beekeeper can’t hold a candle to Statham’s superior Transporter outings or his excellent recent collaborations with Guy Ritchie (Wrath of Man, Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre), it’s far preferable to his blander turns in big-budget fare like the Fast and Furious sequels, Meg 2: The Trench and Expend4bles. It may be too leaden and goofy to move like a butterfly, but at least when it lets Statham do his ass-kicking thing, it stings like a…well, you know.