I Just Saw

I just saw The Beekeeper and it was fun. I had my doubts given that it’s directed by David Ayer, whose track record hasn’t been great. He’s long seemed kind of a hack to me, given films like the travesty that was Bright and the total junk-food-for-the-mind first Suicide Squad. But a film like The Beekeeper suggests that when he’s paired up with a competent writer (Bright’s scribe was the execrable Max Landis) and isn’t subject to a company that doesn’t know what it’s doing (like DC’s movie division), he’s a B-movie action director of the old school.

This movie could easily have starred Charles Bronson or Jean-Claude van Damme in the ‘80s, although it would have been stripped of its political subtext, crude as it already is in Ayer’s vision. The baddies would have been street thugs or the local mob, as opposed to the uppermost echelons of power that come into play here. Jason Statham plays Adam Clay, a beekeeper of indeterminate origin whose neighbour falls prey to telephone fraud. Devastated by the loss of millions from her charitable fund, she takes her own life, and this motivates Clay’s rampage. It transpires that he’s a beekeeper both literally and figuratively, belonging to a covert spy agency themed around bees that operates outside the system.

Jeremy Irons shows up to add a splash of charisma and Josh “Hunger Games” Hutcherson is surprisingly effective as a single-earringed, Hawaiian-shirted, crypto-blathering f***boy. The story is very silly in the old B-movie tradition, but it’s also well-paced and efficient, which is more than can be said for some of Ayers’ work. I think what’s different here is that he’s not weighed down by fantasy tropes and superhero lore that he’s not au fait with and doesn’t care about. This time his writer is Kurt Wimmer, who’s also devolved into hackery before. Here, though, they focus their aim and make a functioning piece of disposable entertainment.

The script has some expository howlers – like when Statham talks about how targeting an elderly person is worse than targeting a child (if you say so…), or a telephone scammer playing the sympathy card to con an old woman by pretending that he has kids; he then mutes his earpiece so he can laughingly say ‘I don’t have kids!’ (Just be done with it and give him a twirly moustache, top hat, and hot air balloon to ride around in.) None of that really matters as the film is rattling off its ultra-violent set pieces, though.

If it feels like it’s missing a sense of real pathos that would make the various murders hit a little harder emotionally, that’s not really the genre this is working in. The only thing I missed from the old formula for these films was the love scene, where if you were lucky you’d see some nudity. Modern audiences don’t seem to like sex on screen, though, and may have even become more puritanical than the last generation. Which is a shame since in previous outings Statham’s been happy to give a little tease. Muscular middle-aged bodies are an awful thing to waste.

Rating: 3/4