Director David Ayer should have checked out some Korean revenge flicks before taking on this Jason Statham vehicle. The Koreans have produced hundreds if not thousands and in the process had to think up new and more interesting reasons for getting back at someone. Statham’s Adam Clay is one of those loners whose past had something to do with a secretive organization of killers that the screenwriter, Kurt Wimmer, never bothers to explain, but Clay’s provenance as a super badass isn’t the only deus ex machina in the film. The victim for whom Clay goes on a rampage is his landlady, or, at least, the older woman whose barn he uses to keep bees and produce honey. She commits suicide after being scammed out of her life savings and a $2 million charity fund she oversees. She seems to be only person in Clay’s life who has ever been kind to him, but that aspect isn’t explored either. Even worse, the woman’s grown daughter works for the FBI and has to deal with all the mayhem Clay causes in going after the scammers, a quest that takes him to the very top of the U.S. government.

So while The Beekeeper is pretty standard issue Statham, meaning he gets to keep his British accent and punches and kicks between pointed one-liners (most of which reference bees), there aren’t many elements outside of the violence and the jokes to keep the viewer interested beyond the first major reckoning, which involves Clay setting fire to an entire office building—right after warning the people who work there that that is exactly what he’s going to do. There also isn’t much to make us question the total lack of moral investigation in Clay’s actions, because the guy at the top of this pyramid of capitalist overreach (Josh Hutcherson) is as standard a villain as Statham is a vigilante, meaning it’s difficult to imagine such a man had not yet been offed by some other angry person before Clay shows up to destroy his business and his life. 

And then Jeremy Irons appears in a totally gratuitous role as a former government cop now in charge of security for people whose involvement in the scam isn’t revealed until the very end. Irons’ main job in the film, besides being the only character with a smidgen of conscience, is to essentially explain how dangerous this secret society is (it seems the U.S. government has used them in the past) and warn his underlings about Clay’s capabilities, which, of course, they ignore because of the standard villain thing that Wimmer feels he’s entitled to as a storyteller. The trouble with cheap revenge flicks is that they don’t really provide the kind of satisfaction that exacting revenge is supposed to supply. If you can’t believe in someone’s right to get back at patented assholes, then what can you believe in?

Opens Jan. 3 in Tokyo at Marunouchi Toei (03-3535-4741), Shinjuku Wald 9 (03-5369-4955).

The Beekeeper home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2024 Miramax Distribution Services, LLC