THE BEEKEEPER (2024)

Does anyone remember ‘Mad-Libs’? Mad-Libs was a game where you were given a paragraph or two that had almost all the nouns and verbs and adjectives taken out of it and you asked another person for ‘any noun’ and ‘any verb’ et cetera, without them seeing the paragraph, and when you read it back, much hilarity would ensue.

More because it was that the player would use nouns like ‘dick’ and ‘bum’ and verbs like ‘farting’ rather than anything else, but a lot of fun could be had with the game.

Now, I’ve got one for you:

(Characters name) is living the quiet live having retired from their occupation as an assassin for the underground group (group name). Unfortunately, when their friend, (friend’s name) is killed by the actions of (young relative) of the boss of (group name), they come out of retirement for revenge. When the boss decides to protect his (young relative) by employing the assistance of (military group) they are told that (characters name) is unstoppable and everyone is subsequently killed.

So many action films run on that formula, and it’s a formula that works when you consider John Wick and its three sequels success, and it is well and truly still alive here in The Beekeeper.

The Beekeeper is directed by David Ayer, who gave us what I think is one of the better super hero (well, villain) movies ever made, Suicide Squad and was written by Kurt Wimmer, who wrote Equlibrium and Law Abiding Citizen, but the creativity of those films is not present here.

When Adam Clay’s (Jason Statham) only friend commits suicide after being scammed out of all the money in the charity she works for by an online scammer, Clay decides to execute everyone involved.

What is so special about Clay though? Clay is a retired ‘Beekeeper’, an extreme black ops operative who has a set of skills that are over and above most normal soldiers.

After destroying the first call centre, Clay discovers they are run by Derek Danforth (Josh Hutcherson) whose employee, Wallace Westwyld (Jeremy Irons) finds out he has a Beekeeper after him, he calls in political favours to try and save his life… but those attempts to subdue fail… and Clay continues his way up the pecking order…

Whilst all this is happening though, he is pursued by the FBI, specifically Agent Wiley (Bobby Naderi) and Agent Parker (Emmy Raver-Lampman), the latter who has a personal stake in the whole affair as the woman who committed suicide in the first place is her mother.

Riffing John Wick in plot and action, as I inferred by the Mad-Lib, The Beekeeper doesn’t really seem to have its own identity, and most people could be shown any seen from this and identify it as any of the mass of Jason Statham as Jason Statham action films out there.

Hutcherson is as annoying as he always is in every film he is in, but thankfully the lack of acting by him and Statham is countered by Raver-Lampman and Naderi, and of course the ever vaudevillian villain Irons, still playing Scar from the Lion King at every opportunity.

Whilst formulaic to the nth degree, thats not to say the film is completely not enjoyable. It has a few moments of violence that are surprising, some characters that are SO ridiculous are can’t figure out if they are rejects from Bullet Train or The Machine, seriously, you wait until you see Clay’s replacement Beekeeper, or the South African mercenary, which makes them so unusual in something that takes itself so seriously, and there are at least a few plot twists that make for fun variations on the theme.

One thing I really didn’t like was making the scammers look like they were doing glorious work. All the scammers were attractive young people and their bosses were across between Taika Waititi in Free Guy and Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort from The Wolf of Wall Street, but when you see some of these call centres in video footage for real, they look anything but! I was confused by the need to make these guys look like they were glamorous, even though their characters were awful from a personality point of view.

I must add though that the hamfisted ‘bee’ references are as stupid as they sound.

Not liking this film is a difficult thing to do as the objection to it comes from its lack of originality, but if I don’t like one film because of that, I have to dislike MOST action films, or horror films for that matter. I think there is some good action sequences in here, but the lack of story and what appears to be a disinterested lead make it a chore.

Disc: No extras at all.