I put off writing about The Beekeeper for a while, mainly because I had a lot going on when I first saw it, but also because I wasn’t sure what I could say about it. Its tense, cleanly shot action had already received much praise; some thought the film’s story was too dumb, others rightly responded, “What’s wrong with that?” This is a film about a beekeeper who’s an ex-agent of a group called The Beekeepers, where characters make various and probably unnecessary comparisons and allusions to bees throughout. If you can’t get on board with that, then this isn’t for you.
And that was pretty much all I could really say about The Beekeeper for a while. Until that is, I decided to watch another recent release that also wants to sell itself with its action and slightly ridiculous premise—Argylle. And let me tell you, I have not had a worse time at the movies in a hot minute. Incompetent at almost every turn, Argylle is a movie that fails spectacularly at everything it aims to accomplish—too senseless to be taken seriously, too genuine to be a farce.
In this way, Argylle helped illuminate what I loved about The Beekeeper, a movie that, while not without fault, knows what it wants to be and achieves it with grace. Jason Statham alone carries a good chunk of the film on his shoulders, offering the audience a competent and ruthless protagonist with a touch of vulnerability—not enough for a full portrait, but enough to keep the stakes grounded. Emmy Raver-Lampman balances him out as the FBI agent hot on his tail yet sympathetic to his motives, echoing the hunter/hunted relationship found in films like The Fugitive. Jeremy Irons and Josh Hutcherson have a good relationship as duo antagonists, and an unexpected appearance from Jemma Redgrave—who I only knew from Doctor Who—rounds out the cast nicely.
What drives a good chunk of the film’s story is Statham’s beekeeper’s righteous war path going up the chain of command of a telecommunication scamming network after they target a close friend of his. He claims that the system failed to put checks and balances in place to stop such crimes against the most vulnerable people in society and that he’s here to level the playing field. The film’s script doesn’t mince words, with Statham stating his intent rather bluntly, but he’s got the juice to say those lines and make the audience think he means them. All that’s left for The Beekeeper to do is to give him some space to kick ass, which it does to delightful ends.
It’s easy to pick apart the plot of the film or argue about what it supposedly endorses—upon closer inspection the film’s insistence that the solution to society’s ills is to let one guy kill a bunch of people seems kinda suspect. But it would be a waste of your time to put any significant thought into that; The Beekeeper is clearly putting more of its effort towards letting you see Jason Statham bury a guy’s face into a keyboard and then drop an elevator full of baddies down fifty stories. I could easily see a world in which this film went straight to streaming—we are blessed that instead, The Beekeeper got to usher in a new year of movies in 2024.
3.5/5 STARS