The Beekeeper. There is A LOT going on here.
Jason Statham (in his fifth film over the last twelve months) plays Adam Clay, who lives on a rural farm where he rents space from Eloise Parker (Phylicia Rashad) and (wait for it…) tends to bees. When tragedy befalls her, he takes it upon himself to avenge those events himself because (wait for it…) he has a mysterious past in a black ops team known as (wait for it…) “Beekeepers”. As his vengeance gets more violent, he is pursued by a number of teams, including FBI agents Parker (Emmy-Raver Lampmann) and Wiley (Bobby Naderi), his former group, and a TON of mercenaries.
Like I said, there is A LOT going on here.
About two thirds through this film directed by David Ayer and written by Kurt Wimmer (who has done at least five remakes or re-imaginings but also did one of my personal favorite films in Equilibrium), I had a moment where I wondered if this was a script that was passed on by Steven Seagal in 1989. With over-the-top bad guys including Josh Hutcherson channeling his best Logan Paul, Minnie Driver who is in it longer than it will take me to type this sentence, and Jeremy Irons who has to remind us A LOT that he used to run the CIA, this film is one that I cannot say I was disappointed by as I set the bar REALLY low. At the same time, The Beekeeper is a bit of a mess with plot points that come up at the most random of times (including what is supposed to be a reveal in the second act that just seems like they went “oh and THIS needs to be a thing” and just moves on), pacing that resembles traffic in that few minutes as rush hour starts to kick in, and action that just had me shrugging my shoulders multiple times.
Every generation needs that action hero that gives us the opportunity to leave our brains at the door for a couple of hours and watch stuff ‘splode, and I think we all know that Statham is on that list. Don’t get me wrong: I dig his stuff (Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre made my top twenty last year), but even his reputation can’t raise The Beekeeper past anything more than mediocre. And before all of the clamoring starts, I really don’t believe there will be a need for #ReleaseTheAyerCut for this one.