Be on Your Best Beehaviour

In The Beekeeper Jason Statham is a beekeeper, someone who keeps bees. He is also a retired Beekeeper, a quadruple badass special agent who acts outside the law to keep society running properly. When the elderly lady he rents a barn from gets internet scammed to death he goes on a killing spree, starting with the call centre fraudsters before punching, shooting and vehicular homiciding his way to the big wigs in Washington.

The Stath often doesn't get the respect he deserves as Hollywoods most versatile action star. He can do the shooting stuff, the driving stuff, the fighting stuff and look credible doing it in anything from lower budget crime capers to polished tent pole actioners, selling everything from gritty revenge to glossy heroics. The Beekeeper is slap bang in his wheelhouse and teaming up with ultra macho film maker David Ayer is a natural fit. In fact, its a wonder they haven't worked together before.

The film is exactly what the trailers show it to be, a mythical badass ala John Wick or Nobody abandoning their quiet life to go on a violent tear. As such it's really all about Jason Statham and all other characters really only exist to make him look cool in some way. The scam victim's daughter is a police detective and she and her partner follow in The Beekeeper's wake, marvelling at how deadly he is and really hammering home the bee metaphors of all his actions. Josh Hutcherson plays the entitled millennial tech douche who makes the fatal mistake of underestimating a real man who doesn't mind getting his hands dirty. Jeremy Irons spends his time espousing the futility of trying to stop Statham (while also trying to stop him), telling targets they are dead already and explaining to a room full of special forces they are "pussies" compared to who is coming. As you would expect in this kind of role, Irons is phoning it in but it's still Jeremy Irons so I believed him.

Statham himself flexes his action mussels with glee and easily sells the idea he could kick everyone else's ass. For all his talents though, one thing we've learned over the years he can't do is an American accent and for some reason he tries one here. I think. That is to say he says every tenth word in a funny voice. He is also tasked with delivering some insane dialogue. At one point Emmy Raver-Lapman's detective is having a conversation with him when he stares into space and delivers a gruff monologue on how stealing from the elderly is even worse than stealing from children. While this sort of chat is indicative of The Beekeeper wearing it's dad-action credentials on its sleeve it, like much of the dialogue, feels so unnatural that it's a little distracting.

This brings us to the film's major flaw, all the weird bee metaphor stuff doesn't really bring anything to proceedings. Add in the fact that all the set pieces are pretty good but not particularly memorable and you are left with a perfectly proficient slice of Charles Bronson on steroids action but one without any of the flair needed to stand out.

So The Beekeeper does everything it says on the tin but nothing more. It's always fun to watch Jason Statham do his thing but a little bit of unique flavour would have been nice.

6 perfectly functioning hives out of 10.

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