I will say up front, I got a decent amount of respect for Jason Statham. Not only did he help produce this movie, but he seems like a nice guy, family man in a committed relationship, but not like a dick about it. He stands by for the Stuntman Union, that's pretty awesome. And of all the meathead action heroes (your Stallones, Schwarzeneggers, and Rocks) he works the best is pretty much any action movie they put him in. Like you don't watch these movies to see any of these guys become different characters, you just watch them transposed into different situations. And Statham kinda just fits in any movie you put him in. That's respectable.
What's This Movie About?
Jason Statham is Adam Clay, a beekeeper. When his landlady falls for a phishing scam and kills herself, he reveals that he is also a Beekeeper with a capital B, which is basically a superpowered secret police officer. And he's about to kill anyone even remotely responsible for his landlady's suicide.
What I Like.
This movie is basically asexual boomer John Wick. While not quite and well staged and shot as those movies, it's still pretty satisfying and crunchy. There are some kills in this movie that made me go "Huhuh, bruuuutal!" The pacing of this movie is excellent as well, keeping me engaged but not overwhelmed. The villains in the movie are perfect. I didn't even need the landlady to kill herself, I was ready for the Beekeeper to murder these fuckers as soon as they were on screen. Pretty much all of them that aren't crazy mercenaries are tech sector bros and nepobabies, and you don't know true satisfaction until you see a guy try to bribe someone with NFTs and then immediately get thrown off a bridge. And the escalation of the violence is sublime. Clay starts out almost like a slasher, hiding in the shadows and picking off guys one at a time. Then, when the road trip section of the movie begins, he starts taking out squads of guys, stealing their guns to use. And the ending is almost a one-man storming of the White House. I actually like Clay's personality in the movie. Yeah, he's basically just Jason Statham, but I like that he goes out of his way to avoid killing as many people as he can. And he has a frank kindness I dug. I have a feeling that this'll be an unpopular opinion, but I actually like the cutaways to the FBI agents. Going to them seeing the aftermath of the Beekeeper's carnage was pretty interesting and I like both the characters. Admittedly the politics of the movie is slightly muddled, but I ain't gonna hate anything that say "punish the greedy".
What I Don't Like.
Um... The ending chickens out of it's set up a little bit, but it also ends so quickly that you don't really have time to think about it.
Final Summation.
This movie is actually good. Not so bad it's good, not ironically good, not good if you shut your brain off. Actually, legitimately good. What the actual fuck.
Why don't we have more movies like this? I don't mean sequels, I mean movies like The Beekeeper. I mean yeah, "don't be greedy" is a common moral, but I mean why don't we have more movies where unstoppable forces just plow over the greedy. I need so many movies where greedy douchebags get murdered indiscriminately, that I want to be sick of them. (But I never will be.) I want these movies to be so ingrained in pop culture, that when Joe Buggknutz comes up with his next get rich quick scheme, he doesn't go through with it because he's afraid Jason's gonna strangle him to death in his sleep.
So... Go see this movie. It's good, even though Jason Statham doesn't turn into bees.
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