The Daily Telegraph - Features
Revenge at its most idiotic and enjoyable
The Beekeeper
15 cert, 105 min ★★★★★
Dir David Ayer
Starring Jason Statham, Emmy Raver-Lampman,
Josh Hutcherson, Jeremy Irons, Jemma Redgrave, Minnie Driver For the second time in six months, a middle-aged man with world-class stubble has signalled his retreat into early retirement by tending to his own beehive. The first was David Beckham, introduced in his Netflix documentary stoically fussing over bees in his back garden. Now it’s Jason Statham, a hero with a sting in his tail in the bone-crunchingly ridiculous action-thriller The Beekeeper.
Statham was never subtle, but his recent movies have jumped the shark. (Or punched one in the case of last summer’s Meg 2.) The only animals harmed in The Beekeeper,
by contrast, are the hornets who threaten his beehive early in this enjoyably idiotic caper – and their reward is death by electric shock.
He’s soon picking on enemies his own size in a film that hits the guilty pleasure zone in the style of an old straight-to-video action flick. Thirty years ago, The Beekeeper would have starred Jean-Claude Van Damme or Dolph Lundgren. Now the hero is Statham’s Adam Clay – a retired “Beekeeper” black ops agent whose mission is to “protect the hive”. The baddie, meanwhile, is a glum Jeremy Irons playing a former CIA director working for a murky mega-corporation with a lucrative line in internet phishing scams.
The phishers reel in the wrong target when they defraud the sweet old lady renting her barn to Clay (The Cosby Show’s Phylicia Rashad). Her life savings gone, she shoots herself. This thoroughly kills Clay’s buzz and the “Beekeeper” is soon hunting for revenge. It is a bodyslamming quest which involves burning down office blocks, slicing the fingers off henchmen and glowering balefully into space.
None of this is within yelling distance of nuanced, and Statham shows all the range of a block of concrete. Irons, for his part, tries not to look in physical pain as he ploughs through dialogue that lands like something from a video game cutscene. Elsewhere, Minnie Driver pops up disinterestedly as a senior Washington spook and there’s a strange cameo by Gemma Redgrave as a businesswoman-turnedpolitician who is equal parts Mary Berry and Donald Trump.
Yet for all the stodginess, the action is dynamic – often shockingly gory – and enthusiastically marshalled by David Ayer. The Beekeeper is nobody’s idea of clever, but it does contain a scene in which an evil mercenary puts a gun to Statham’s head and says, “To bee or not to bee?” – and how can you hate a film that leans so cheerfully into its own ludicrousness?
In cinemas now; then on Sky Cinema