The Beekeeper Movie Review: Too Many Bee Puns Spoil Jason Statham's 'John Wick' Party! (LatestLY Exclusive)

The Beekeeper Movie Review: In case the headline isn't clear enough, The Beekeeper is a John Wick ripoff. And just about an average one at being that. David Ayer, who has now given up on Warner Bros releasing his original cut of Suicide Squad, turns Jason Statham into a relentless killing machine to murder people left, right, and centre as The Beekeeper in a film that takes its name way too seriously. I mean, by the end of the movie, I wouldn't blame you if you end up like Nicolas Cage from The Wicker Man, screaming, 'AHH... THE BEE PUNS, THE BEE PUNS... THEY ARE IN MY EARS!!!' I did. I Believe in the Traditional Hero: David Ayer on 'The Beekeeper'.

The Beekeeper Plot

Jason Statham is The Beekeeper, who, well, actually keeps bees. Adam Clay is his alias, and later, we learn he was part of this mysterious, shady organisation that's also called Beekeepers. Don't ask me why. All I got from the movie as answers were a buttload of bee metaphors. Anyway, like John Wick, he is retired and tending to his own business in a sleepy town. If John Wick was spurred back to action by the death of his dog and the theft of his car, then Clay also goes back into violence to avenge the suicide of his kind landlord and the theft of her savings in a phishing scam that targets senior citizens.

Like in the first John Wick movie, the antagonist is a rich junkie brat named Derek (Josh Hutcherson), who keeps undermining his new enemy while his father-figure Wallace (Jeremy Irons) realises the idiot has bitten more than he could chew and still decides to protect him in what he is sure is a losing battle. I could just go on with the parallels here, but I might end up writing the whole screenplay.

Watch the Trailer of The Beekeeper:

The Beekeeper vs John Wick

Still, despite the John Wick template, I was optimistic about The Beekeeper. At least for the first forty minutes, that is. Even though he gets stuck with generic action fare, Jason Statham makes fight scenes look alive with the kind of magnetism he brings to those sequences. In The Beekeeper, the sequences where he brings down a building that houses a phishing company after taking down some of the men and later attacking the goons sent to punish him were quite badass. Even the scene where he kills a villain by drowning using his car had the same hard-boiled vibe. But from this point, though, The Beekeeper begins to embrace its John Wick spirit a bit too tightly and ends up being its dull cousin in comparison. Dude, if you want to copy, at least try to write answers better than the person you are copying from.

To quote an example here, at one point, Clay's former agency acts like the High Table and sends an assassin to kill him. The scene is done within a minute and hardly among the film's better moments, except if you like seeing the Stat smash a lady across car windows. Perhaps Ayer realised he was flying too close to the sun and didn't involve the agency after that, but that doesn't stop The Beekeeper from taking down the same path as the first John Wick film when Clay fights his way to the top of the syndicate to get his man. The thing is, the killings felt gratuitous after some time and mindless, too. I mean, even John Wick kills people, but he mostly kills those who are about to kill him, and all of them are criminals and assassins. I bet my eyes that half the men Clay kills in the movie are just doing their jobs and don't deserve their grisly deaths.

So when Clay goes on his rampage at two other locations, it is hard to back him there, never mind the God Mode status given to the character, which seeps out any tension from these scenes. It helps little when the shaky camerawork and rushed editing end up sucking the thrill from the fights. The only sequence that remotely grabbed my attention was a man-o-man fight scene between Clay and the leader of Derek's hired security detail. The Expendables 4 Movie Review: Time to Bid Goodbye to the Franchise, Sylvester Stallone and Jason Statham!

The Bee Puns and What Else Stung

Even the subplots between these fight scenes pass muster. The scenes involving the two FBI agents, Verona Parker (Emmy Raver-Lampman) and Matt Wiley (Bobby Naderi) feel like they belong to a Brooklyn Nine-Nine parody, which is funny since Verona was a crucial piece in Clay's revenge mission and deserved better than to give me info dumps on bees that I could show off on my next trip to an insectarium, which is like never.

Jeremy Irons' character held a lot of promise in the beginning: a former CIA head who works for Derek's mother and may have had an affair with her, now reluctantly tasked to protect her dumbass son. He also had the best line in the movie when Wallace realises who Derek messed with, but in the end, his character gets a lame exit.

Josh Hutcherson was quite good as the villain, but his character also suffers from the downslide of the movie; the revelation of who his mother is raises momentary interest in his arc, and it should have had a far bigger impact on the plot. However, the twist only leads to a pointless dramatic scene in the finale (also, veiled digs at a certain ex-president) and gives Clay more duty-bound men to kill. Also, what's Minnie Driver doing in such a lame role?

Final Thoughts on The Beekeeper

For a film that has 'The Stat' track and destroy a racket of phishers for glorious purpose, The Beekeeper is not 'bloody sweet' as the deal sounds. Buzzing too much on John Wick's territory, The Beekeeper stings with ambition but ends up in its self-created honey trap of comparison. There, even I can make bad bee puns.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jan 18, 2024 05:33 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).