The Beekeeper: Not meant to bee

The Beekeeper (2024), Dir. David Ayer, 105 mins, Sky Cinema

This one, well, this one left me pretty angry. I think its the laziness that hurts the worst; its like no-one is really trying, which is surely the worst sin of all for a film. The script is predictable, horribly derivative of the John Wick and The Equaliser films. The acting is awful, some of the worst ‘performances’ I’ve ever seen, and even the likes of Statham and Jeremy Irons are just phoning it in. As for the stunts/action scenes, usually the core selling-point for films like this, they are incredibly boring and often utterly ridiculous in how they defy basic physics.

Lets just pause for a moment to consider the horrible story and its mountain of convenient clichés. Elderly lady Eloise Parker(Phylicia Rashad) is the victim of an internet scam that robs her of her life savings, She also JUST HAPPENS to be a treasurer of a charity so at the same time is robbed of its $2 million fund. She kills herself from guilt and shame. But Eloise JUST HAPPENS to have recently befriended Adam Clay (Jason Statham) who is not only a genuine Beekeeper but also a retired Government assassin where the term ‘Beekeeper’ is a euphemism for… well, you remember how criminals cowered in John Wick at mention of ‘the Bogeyman’? Well, ‘the Beekeeper’ is the same thing: in Government Black Ops circles, its like the very definition of a Terminator Killing Machine. And we’ve got a very pissed-off Beekeeper here.

Eloise also JUST HAPPENS to be the mother of an FBI agent, Verona Parker (Emmy Raver-Lampman). Possibly the most unconvincing FBI agent ever portrayed on film, Verona trails behind Clay while he goes on a wild storm of righteous murder. Weirdly, Clay seems more upset by Eloise’s death than Verona is- you’d hardly think it was her own mother who’d been scammed and had killed herself, its just like another day at the office (bad acting or a terrible script, you decide- would her boss even let her handle the case? Am I overthinking things?).  Anyway, an army of armoured thugs is killed and the scam centre blown up by Clay and the trail of clues is followed  to its boss, a young punk who JUST HAPPENS to be the son of the President of the United States, whose election campaign was funded by her son’s scam money- so Clay’s hunt for the bad guys leads pretty high up. He’s facing off against the CIA, the FBI, an active Beekeeper, the Presidents security, an army of the best hired thugs dirty money can buy and clearly none of them stand a chance.

Its bad. Its worse than that plot summary sounds, because in execution its more ham-fisted than that summary might suggest. Nothing works. There is no internal logic, nothing makes sense, the mythology of Government operatives and Beecaves (as opposed to Batcaves) of endless munitions, and smooth-criminal scam artists so ridiculous its more farce than thriller.

One watches a film like this, you suddenly gain a better understanding of how good those John Wick films are, and wonder just how in the world something so bad could ever get greenlit. I mean, really, how does that happen? Mind-boggling, really.

Avoid at all costs folks, your time if far too valuable to be wasted on rubbish like this. And yet I hear they intend to make a trilogy of these films -sometimes I feel like abandoning all hope. Bee afraid. Bee very afraid.