In The Beekeeper, one man’s brutal 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”.

‘The Beekeeper’ is the latest Jason Statham thriller, which features the action star as yes, a beekeeper, who gets drawn back into his old life of beating folks up for a shady organisation after an elderly lady he has befriended falls for a phishing scam that sees her lose her life savings. It is an utterly preposterous movie in almost every respect, but that does not mean it is not entertaining, and ‘The Beekeeper’ is certainly entertaining.

Statham is Adam Clay, a man who now lives in a rural area where he rents a barn from his neighbour Eloise (Phylicia Rashad), spending his days tending to his bees and living a quiet life. When Eloise is scammed, he is driven by revenge to track down the company and individuals that emptied her life savings, and he doesn’t care about the chaos he may leave in his wake. Now we have to talk about the ‘Beekeeper’ device or metaphor, with it doubling as both Clay’s profession in the present, and his life in the past, where he was an operative known also, conveniently enough, as a ‘Beekeeper’, with the title given as his role was to operate in the shadows and do anything necessary to protect the hive. The hive in this case being the good of society. It is an idea that clearly sounded good in the writers heads, much less so in practice, no matter how many times characters provide exposition to explain the concept.

The dialogue is clunky and some of the characters are ridiculous, not least the random South African mercenary who appears near the end, beating out the ‘new’ beekeeper who turns up to a fight in a long coat and high heels. It is predictable as hell (despite the score trying to big up the ‘twists’) and it is certainly one of those films that it’s best not to think too hard about, and yet it’s a lot of fun, brainless fun no doubt, but there’s nothing wrong with that. It actually has a pretty decent cast for a mindless Jason Statham action thriller with Jeremy Irons slipping seamlessly into a corporate villain role, alongside Josh Hutcherson and Minnie Driver popping up, and the action sequences are well put together with plenty of violence.

Director David Ayer has some good stuff in his past alongside some rubbish and while ‘The Beekeeper’ is arguably closer to the rubbish, it is at least good fun and that is in many respects, why we go to the cinema.

Rating: 3/5

Directed By: David Ayer

Starring: Jason Statham, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Josh Hutcherson, Bobby Naderi, Minnie Driver, Phylicia Rashad and Jeremy Irons

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt15314262/