One man’s campaign for vengeance takes on national stakes after he is revealed to be a former operative of a powerful and clandestine organization known as Beekeepers.
Here’s a January release that actually looks like fun…..somewhat. Jason Statham, still in his ‘own particular set of skills’ phase, starring in “The Beekeeper”: an objectively terrible, very dumb BEE movie that often stings at your sense of adventure AND intelligence….
….but does it make for a decent enough waste of time?
After so many embarrassing directorial misfires on a constant basis, David Ayer finally takes off the shackles to emerge with a directorial outing best described as…..arbitrary. It’s nowhere as superficial as The Tax Collector, thankfully, as the collaborative effort is more cheerfully undemanding and retrograde in a way in which it can be enjoyed. However, it came across more derivative to me.
More often than not, Gabriel Beristain’s cinematography is tightly framed but has this stale aroma that pollutes every frame and makes it feel second-rate, a shame since his work on Black Widow was more dynamic than this. Editing is also bludgeoning in how middling it was.
The less I bring up the tiresome bee metaphors and clunky dialogue exchanges, the better.
Part of me couldn’t even believe how chintzy the production design came across as, looking more like a made-for-TV pilot with a lot of sets feeling small and cheap-ish in scale; the film has a very limited budget and it shows more often than not. The costumes and overused musical score come off as incredibly basic, while the performances are stuck in three separate planes of autopilot: hammy like Thanksgiving dinner, wooden or over the top. Jason Statham always has this matter-of-fact minimalism to his performances that land him strictly in between the first two while Jeremy Irons and everyone else leans more toward the last two.
Action-based, mythology heavy films like John Wick, James Bond, Nobody, A-Team or Mission Impossible have obviously pushed the boundaries for super spy mountains of lunacy but the manner in which this one pollinates its surroundings is both too spread out, too thin and too amateurish to be polished. It goes exactly how you’d expect it to: retiree from the organization is drawn back in either by his own ego or losing someone he cares about, aims to take down the system, shooty-booty bang bang for the next hour. Kurt Wimmer, who last I checked DIRECTED LAST YEARS CHILDREN OF THE CORN, continues his disastrous track record by playing fast and loose with the rules of worldbuilding again; it’s as relatively unambitious and hackneyed as his previous projects.
It’s basically a plot without a story.
Step back and consider this: the event that kickstarts the entire events of this plot into motion is both tenuous and cheapening in the way it invalidates both the main character’s later interactions with everyone around him and its intended messaging on vigilantism, phishing and political corruption. Almost all aspects of this film’s narrative hinges on how much you’re able to suspend your disbelief between the outlandish scenarios and unbelievable action, often veering into unintentionally humorous territory due to the sheer absurdity of specific sequences and characters making totally nonsensical choices. The supporting cast, in particular, felt underdeveloped, leaving them mostly as one-dimensional action fodder.
It shows an incredible disregard for reality with its inept pileup of action movie cliches (never mind how middling the choreography is) and the twists range from predictable to WTF. Sure, it has decent pacing, but everything surrounding it leaves it feeling rushed and bundled.
And that’s just made even worse by how the movie ends: blaming the events on just a few bad apples who got greedy instead of reassuring us that the problem lies in the systemic and purposeful corruption embedded in both the marrow of our institutions AND the people influenced by that. For all this movie’s talks on burning it all down and tearing the system apart from the roots, the way it clunkers to the finish line had me puzzled.
Would I call this a ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ affair? I’m heavily tempted to do so but that’s just in terms of the bonkers plotless ‘story’ that didn’t sting me in the way I expected it to. This is more mediocre with everything else involved.
