Y/N? Yes.
Director: David Ayer
Stars: Jason Statham, Josh Hutcherson, Emmy Raver-Lampman, & Jeremy Irons
Review by Damocles
The escalation of the plot in this movie … is hilarious and brilliantly evocative of cocaine-fuelled script-writing that ruled the 90s action movies schlock.
To describe the Beekeeper in one word is easy.
Fun.
To describe it in two words is even easier.
Fun & Dumb.
The Beekeeper as a movie, is one of the most aggressive, relentless and stupid films I have ever watched. It is a throwback to the 90s where films just had the most insane scripts and treated it as seriously as possible. Because the only way to actually get the audience onboard is to commit to the joke, take it as seriously as possible and dare to try and pull it off.
And I’m happy to say that the Beekeeper does that extremely well. It never once tries to wink, or act like it is in on the joke that is the script. Instead, it commits in a way that can only be described as the David Ayer style.
To describe the style of David Ayer is a complicated task. On one hand, it’s clear that Ayer has real, genuine knowledge of the streets, due to personal experience. This street knowledge can been seen in every single film Ayer has ever been involved in. He showcases gang violence, corruption, and ordinary people in ways that not many other film directors are able to.
But he always struggle to piece together the overall story. His films are like vignettes, implausibly put together by a tiny plot that struggles with pacing and emotional investment. You catch glimpses of a violent, tragic world, but it’s not quite compelling enough to keep you in your head till the end of the movie.
Bright, End of Watch, Street Kings, Sabotage, Suicide Squad …. these are all gritty crime dramas that never quite breathe beyond the murky, dark lens that Ayer loves to shoot in.
In Ayer’s eyes … the whole world is dark, grimy with truly garish splashes of colour. Think the dark backdrop of Suicide Squad contrasting with Harley Quinn’s bizarre outfit, or in this film, the use of gold colours mixed in with random splashes of purple or red.
If I had to point out the signatures in an Ayer film, it would be bizarre costuming with garish colours, gritty, grimy urban landscapes, and loose characterisations that barely drive protagonists or antagonists forward.
However, in the Beekeeper, all of this actually works. Statham’s character is as simplistic and one dimensional as it gets. He can kick ass, he is on the side of good and he’s out for revenge for an elderly black woman who literally gets about 5 minutes of screen time.
For you see, this movie isn’t really concerned about character development. In fact, it speeds through that, just enough to justify the next insane plot point and why the characters are behaving like they are.
To illustrate that point, the dog which features in John Wick had more screen time and impact than the motivation for Statham’s character, Adam Clay, to go on his killing spree.
It’s that kind of movie and I absolutely adored it.
To continue the John Wick comparison, the world of “Beekeepers” is nowhere near as intriguing as the assassin world of John Wick, but it does serve a different function and that is to keep the insane plot developing even further.
As you are probably aware, it is the Beekeeper’s plot that truly sells the movie. The implausible leaps that this film takes is so ludicrous that it becomes fun. The action too, keeps escalating, with a bizarre escalation of threats that keep getting more zany.
Fellow beekeepers, gangsters, FBI HRT, Tier One operators, Secret Service, crazy cowboy mercenaries …. never once does the movie stop to explain nor further charaterise these villains. They exist solely to up the stakes and be cannon fodder for Clay to beat down.
He is also ridiculously inconsistent with how he kills or incapacitate people. At first, it seems he is above using guns, but by the end of the movie, he’s has no issue with using them.
The rules in this movie are just tossed aside for whatever purpose the plot needs. Much like the side characters, who barely rate any mention. Even the villain, played by Josh Hutcherson, is too boring, bland and obviously a take on Gen Z tropes warrant any interest.
Even when it comes to the rules of film-making, there are several strange goofs that puzzle me. Such as a scene where the background of two characters talking is extremely distracting due to the actions of the extras in the back. Or the colour grading of the film, which veers from ugly dark colours to excessively bright locations with a very obvious yellow tint.
Nothing really stood out visually either. The framing of every shot was relatively bland, the action was serviceable but in a fun, iconic Statham way and the music definitely did not impress either.
While it may seems like I am saying that this film is very vanilla, it is not to the detriment of the film. It’s one of those perfectly serviceable action films with no illusions about what it is. And for that lack of pretension, I actually admire the fact that it knows it fits squarely in the B-action movie category and is unashamed of itself.
Much like those trashy, fun, silly action movies in the 80s, where a man goes on a killing spree, just because he happens to be the right man, in the wrong place and time, the Beekeeper is slotting itself right in that genre with aplomb. Things just keep escalating, and the stakes keep getting higher, and whilst it makes no sense as to how one solitary black woman who took her life due an online scam, led to the conclusion of the movie …. it sure was fun along the way.
Watch this movie with your friends and a couple of drinks, and it promises to be a good time.
A scene to recall: When Adam Clay decided that subtlety was out of the question, walked right up to a squad of FBI HRT operators and just incapacitated them singe-handed, whilst regular FBI agents nearby took no notice of this insane rumble literally metres away until one of these poor cops was slammed on a car.
Honestly …. how did they not notice multiple gunshots, yelling, screaming, punching and kicking …. but as I’ve clearly stated in the review above … these kind of questions are not the ones you should be asking in a movie as dumb as this.
Damocles' Journal 