The beekeeper forces you to join Jason Statham’s hive

A Jason Statham action film from January, titled The beekeeper comes with the weight of expectations. “Beekeeper” should have a double meaning. The film must be littered with ironic puns and references. The action should be fun and creative, ideally with bee-centric jokes. And above all, the film must be ridiculous, but with a straight face that hides the knowing wink behind the curtain.

Good news: The beekeeper checks all these boxes.

I enjoyed the film when I first saw it, but since then it has grown on me, like honey in a comb. Yes, some of the major plot points don’t make any sense, including the character deaths that set the entire plot in motion. And half the cast isn’t quite at the level of tongue-in-cheek action fun as Jason Statham and Jeremy Irons (dutifully following Michael Nyqvist’s lead from Johannes Wick as “Man telling the petulant villain how extremely fucked he is”). But if you’re looking for light-hearted January genre, you could do a lot worse.

The premise pits Statham’s Adam Clay, a retired badass who lives a life of quiet beekeeping, facing off against an evil call center that has scammed someone he cares deeply about. As Clay investigates (and destroys) those responsible for the plan, he discovers a deep conspiracy (and more people to destroy).

The beekeeper opens with an opening credits filled with bee imagery – bee statues, art and more – and in the first appearance, Clay is in the middle of beekeeping. That should prepare you for the onslaught of bee jokes and references to come.

But the film has more than bee humor. The fight scenes are great, designed by action maestro Jeremy Marinas (John Wick: Chapter 4) and make heavy use of props to keep the combat fresh. The first big action scene takes place in a call center, where Statham uses phones, keyboards, computer monitors, and whatever he can get his hands on to beat up the scammers and their security team. Marinas and director David Ayer (End of watch) film the sequence well, create clear visual lines so the audience can follow the action, and use sharp editing to bring out the full force of the impact.

Statham is his reliable self, combining his effortless gruff charm with his comedic skills to help sell the ridiculous lines he has to deliver. And the film looks great: Ayer and cinematographer Gabriel Beristain cleverly infuse the images with a yellow/amber color palette that matches the title and mood, often giving you the feeling of watching the film from a honeycomb perspective.

The villains are also brutally over-the-top, which adds to it The beekeeper‘s overall atmosphere. Working for brash tech brother Derek Danforth (Josh Hutcherson), son of the US President (Jemma Redgrave), the call center staff is something of a mix wolf of wall street‘s Jordan Belfort with an evangelical preacher, who adds a touch That hard‘s cocaine-snorting bastard Harry Ellis. They wear flashy suits, give high fives after stealing from old people, and generally act like a brotherhood that has been given billions of dollars to commit crimes.

This makes Statham’s revenge on them all the more fun. The beekeeper excels at channeling Statham’s ability to effortlessly deliver lines like “You sound young.” I bet you don’t have any estate planning,” or the endless bee references listed above. He’s one of the few people on the planet who can make stuff like that sound funny and terrifying at the same time, and the movie probably wouldn’t work without him. (Or, honestly, wouldn’t have happened without his participation.)

A lot doesn’t work The beekeeper. When I first saw it, the sloppy plots (the event that motivates Statham’s revenge isn’t really under much criticism) and a boring FBI B-plot with Umbrella Academy‘s Emmy Raver-Lampman held back some of my enjoyment.

Raver-Lampman plays Agent Verona Parker, the daughter of fraud victim Statham who wants revenge. Her character is placed in the familiar position of a state officer hunting down the man who does what she would like to do. (In this case, revenge on her mother.) Unfortunately, this element of the film is derived from better versions of this storyline: her relationship with her mother is vaguely sketched, and we don’t see much of her anguish about her predicament.

A very minor spoiler, since this happens early in the film: the plot-starting death I mentioned earlier is the suicide of Eloise Parker (Phylicia Rashad), a sweet old lady who rents a room at the Clay beeyard. When the call center scammers rob her and her charity of everything, she takes her own life immediately: no phone call to any of her loving children, no plea to Clay or the authorities for help. It diminishes the impact of the revenge story by worsening both Clay and Agent Parker’s relationships with Eloise, and the revenge would have been just as righteous if she had simply been ripped off.

But the film improves with distance. Days later, I mostly remember the good times The beekeeper Offers: Jason Statham punches fools who deserve a beating, delivers the pain in exciting and inventive ways, all while delivering bee-themed one-liners. Sometimes that’s all you want from a bee movie.

The beekeeper will begin pollinating theaters on January 12.