‘The Beekeeper’ is an All Too Familiar Jason Statham Movie

Jason Statham has led a string of action projects lately that have boosted his star power, but also weakened the quality of his presence. His latest film, The Beekeeper, is a culmination of this mixed bag effect, as David Ayer’s direction and the sheer fun of Statham’s badassery can’t avoid falling into same trappings seen throughout the star’s filmography.

The film sees Statham play Adam Clay — a seemingly innocuous beekeeper who shares a wholesome bond with an older woman named Eloise (Phylicia Rashad). However, after a group of scammers deplete Eloise of her finances, she takes her own life. This sends Adam on a personal path of vengeance—which is a total nightmare for these criminals since Adam isn’t just an ordinary beekeeper. Instead, he’s a retired operative of a secret organization with incredible combat skills and a deadly determination for justice. Unfortunately, these scammers are just the first obstacle in a wider conspiracy that finds Adam fighting his way to the top of a corrupt empire.

Although Ayer and Statham haven’t worked together like this before, their collaboration embodies the essentials of an easy-to-love action romp. The brutality and the bloodshed of the action builds perfectly alongside Adam’s growing fury. At first, Adam just seems like a standard Statham character who solves most of his problems with his fists. Eventually, though, he evolves into a daunting vessel of revenge who uses anything at his disposal to kill nearly everyone in his way, and it’s a lot of fun. While Statham brings his signature stern demeanor to give each fight this white-knuckled energy, Ayer showcases some kill creativity that’s great to see. With each step up this nefarious ladder, Adam gets more diabolical tools at his disposal to dispatch enemies and displays some impressive ingenuity to get out of tight spots.

Ayer also utilizes the environments Adam ends up in really well and it’s a big reason there’s so much good variety in the action. Even the gore amps up a little bit as Statham races towards the finale and it’s great that the film creates stakes worthy of all-out chaos. When it comes to the action department, Ayer and Statham don’t come up short and it’s a big reason why The Beekeeper could easily be seen as a standard crowd-pleaser. Yet, it’s still chock-full of shortcomings that keep it from being truly special.

Despite The Beekeeper boasting notable original elements in its story and vision, it can’t escape feeling like a typical Statham action flick. Like many of Statham’s films, it relies too much on his screen presence and hard-hitting action to get by and doesn’t have a strong enough narrative to keep audiences totally hooked. It follows a basic action premise that audiences have seen multiple times where Statham rolls through whatever criminal underworld he finds himself in. Along the way, he beats a lot of people up and essentially acts as this unstoppable one-man army. It’s a scenario that’s been beaten to death as much as a generic lackey in an action flick and when the film isn’t focused on Adam’s physicality, it tonally misses the mark.

Statham just doesn’t have the emotional range as an actor to make the gutting parts of Adam’s motivations hit as hard as his punches. He comes off unbreakably frigid in moments where he’s grieving over Eloise and it’s easily a missed opportunity to give the film more tender emotions that audiences can relate to. Frankly, the only emotion that viewers will connect with is Adam’s rage because the villains are so easily despisable. It’s actually impressive how Ayer makes these baddies so devious and underhanded that you’ll legitimately want to start booing them. Their introduction will make your skin crawl with how realistic and cruel phishing can be and surprisingly fun performances from Josh Hutcherson and Jeremy Irons that give them a delightfully villainous turn.

Yet, there’s a noticeable lack of substance with The Beekeeper, and the film’s script from Kurt Wimmer is a big reason why the film can’t get out of generic action territory. Aside from one pretty rad plot twist that alters the direction of the finale, the film generally moves in a predictable path. The lore surrounding the government program Adam was once a part of isn’t utilized enough to be anything more than a breadcrumb for FBI agents to follow. And overall, when the film isn’t focused on Adam, it’s wildly uninteresting.

The dialogue can also be terribly painful, with the recycled genre lines that characters are forced to spew and the annoying ways that characters are pushed to act. The writing features too many groan-worthy bee puns and the sections with the pursuing FBI agents are totally devoid of meaningful moments—which is weird considering one of them is Eloise’s daughter Verona (Emmy Raver-Lampman). That’s not to say that Raver-Lampman doesn’t give a likeable enough performance, but it’s so obvious that the script does her no favors with the drastic tonal shifting she’s forced to do.

The Beekeeper does have its bright spots that come from Ayer’s direction and the stretches of action that see Statham doing what he does best: kicking the crap out of people on the big screen. But it’s no different than any other time we’ve seen Statham in this spot before and the lack of a sturdy script makes the film a hit and miss watch.

The Beekeeper is now playing in theaters.