In 2023, Jason Statham starred in two of the top three worst movies on my Worst Movie list. He is starting off 2024 better than that.

Adam Clay (Jason Statham) is a beekeeper who has rented some space from Eloise Parker (Phylicia Rashad) for his hives. When Eloise gets scammed out of all her money, including 2 million dollars from a charity that she ran, she kills herself. This set off Clay, who turned out to be a retired member of a special governmental group called the Beekeepers, and he went on a killing spree of everyone involved in the scam.

This was absolutely a poor-man’s John Wick. There is even the scene where the cocky young guy is told by a father-figure that he has messed up and is going to be killed and that there is nothing they can do about it. This felt right out of John Wick’s first film. 

The cocky young guy behind the scam scheme is Josh Hutcherson and he does a decent job of being slimy as could be. The ‘father-figure’ was a former CIA director played by Jeremy Irons. Both of these two did a great job as their characters, even if there is not much to them. This is a good example of good actors elevating parts that might not be very deep.

However, Hutcherson’s character’s eventual identity is very cringeworthy and is a big part of the finale of this movie that was so out there that it brought the film down.

The first part of the film was actually pretty decent and had a lot of fun, cheesy action with Jason Statham just killing fools. The film does go over the edge several times in the third act, stretching credibility to a thin. thin string.

There are two FBI agents that the film follows for some reason. Emma Raver-Lampman played Agent Veronica Parker, the daughter of Phylicia Rashad’s character but you could hardly guess that considering how detached she was most of the film. That plot point should have been eliminated or expanded upon instead of what was done. 

And as I have hinted at, the finale is just so improbably that, even in this type of a film, it makes you roll your eyes. This was very much like those crazy action movies of the 1990s. If that is what you are looking for, The Beekeeper is enough fun to get by, even if there are better movies that feature revenge killing. There were some decent kills in the first part of the film that were satisfying. There was one that was shown in the trailer that I wish would have been kept for the film because it would have been epic if I did not know it was coming.

Some of the dialogue of this movie was silly, with so many bee-puns that you just have to shake your head. 

The Beekeeper is dumb fun and a Jason Statham fan would enjoy this a lot. The dumb stuff never threatened to overwhelm the film and there was enough fun parts to make this watchable.

3.1 stars