The Beekeeper
Sarring Jason Statham, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Josh Hutcherson, Bobby Naderi, Phylicia Rashad ,Jeremy Irons
Rating: ** ½
The very notion of a messiah with a magic potion appeals to the audience, many of whom have been a victim of online scamming. When a kindly school teacher is scammed of all her money it is time for her tenant to show his true colours.
You are in luck if after being scammed your tenant decides to draw blood from those responsible. It’s a solid premise for an action film. And Jason Statham as Adam Clay is a juggernaut on a rampage against the bad guys. Something like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger combined, only more lean, mean and suffused with spleen
Statham hardly speaks. Which is a blessing. This is a screenplay in which action most decidedly speaks louder than words. Some of the stunt pieces are staged in a hallucinatory mood with colours that suggest decadence and doom, but the overall mood is one of fun and redemption.
The mood swings are enormously engaging, though a tad too conveniently pegged to wildly improbable coincidences , like the cop on duty turning out to be the dead woman’s daughter.
Small world.
The plot is populated with pulpy villains, who get their comeuppance in shoutouts to salvation.
In the typical tradition of vendetta plots, there is a pyramid of iniquity leading up to Josh Hutcherson as Derek Danforth , a master scamster whose mother played by Jemma Redgrave, happens to be the, ahem, President Of America.
Significantly our lady President turns a blind eye to her son’s disgraceful shenanigans, as many politicians are prone to do, and even appoints an ex-CIA man( the extraordinarily skilled Jeremy Irons) to handle the crisis.
I would have liked to see more confrontational scripting bringing Statham and Irons in the same line of vision. Rather than telescope the action, the narration spreads out the conflict into a widened arc. Consequently the storytelling never gets a chance to catch its breath. Neither do we, frankly. And that is good.
The Beekeeper is not a experience to be enjoyed in repose. Get into it quickly and get out fast. Not unlike the midnights raids into Mephistophelian hideouts that this film specializes in.
