The Beekeeper

THE BEEKEEPER | Official Restricted Trailer
Amazon MGM Studios

This is the perfect Jason Statham film. It's perfect because the pacing is perfect, there isn't a false step in the whole show. It's perfect because Jason Statham beats up a boatload of bad guys. In other words it's perfectly ridiculous which makes it great fun. Go Jason, go! Beat those bad guys to a pulp. Fold, spindle and mutilate them until the audience (me) is content.

Jason plays a retired fixit man, a Beekeeper. Beekeepers get called in when something has gone wrong with the system that keeps society running smoothly. They get called in when the systems that are normally used to keep things in check fail and things start to go off the rails. But Jason is retired. He keeps bees and lives in a barn he rents from an old lady who lives out in the boonies. The show opens with him disposing of a nest of nasty hornets. His technique is interesting. He covers the nest with a paper bag and breaks it loose from its support, carries it into his barn, sticks a fluorescent light bulb into the opening of the bag, smashes the part of the bulb that is inside the bag and applies electricity to the light bulb. We get treated to some sparkling lights and sounds and that's it for the hornets. Kind of hoping this is foreshadowing of what's going to happen to the bad guys, even though we haven't seen any bad guys yet, we know there are going to be some, obviously, because it's a Jason Statham film.

There is some science-y sounding mumbo-jumbo about hornets attacking beehives and how bees will turn on their queen if the drones she is producing are defective. Don't know about any of that, but they don't spend more than a couple of lines on the subject, just enough to get the idea. Wait, are the bees protecting the hive, or is it the beekeeper? Oh, right, the beekeeper steps in when the bees can't handle the problem themselves.

Okay, we're going to have some spoilers here, but can you really spoil a Jason Statham film? We know what's going to happen and the whole point is to watch Jason get medieval on everyone who gets in his way.

Things get going when the old lady gets scammed by some sleazy hackers who have subverted some anti-virus software. The old lady is a trustee for a charity and she holds the keys for a $2 million dollar bank account. The scumbags talk her into giving up the keys and immediately siphon all the money from all her bank accounts. Distraught over this apparently unrecoverable loss, she shoots herself. Now, you might wonder how such a feeble minded person got to be in charge of a $2 million bank account, but that's just because you are a cynical twerp.

Okay, there is one false step. After work Jason goes over to the old lady's house for dinner, because she invited him. When he gets there the door is open. He goes in, it's dark, and hearing nothing, he picks up a kitchen knife. Just as he discovers the dead old lady, a woman bursts in with a gun and busts him. How did he not hear her? She must have just driven up, unless she has been lying in wait? Turns out she is the old lady's daughter and an FBI agent to boot. Of course she is.

Now Jason is looking for the scumbag hackers who stole the money. Turns out the cops have been looking for them but haven't been able to track them down. Jason still has connections to the Beekeepers organization which gets him a clue and that's all he needs, now Jason's fury is unleashed on the sleazebags and massive mayhem ensues. 

Turns out the scam originated in a boiler room that has a couple of dozen slimy mudder fudders bilking people left, right and center, and there are a bunch of these boiler rooms operating across the country, all reporting to the master sleazeball who is the head of a giant internet company like Facebook or Instagram or something. He is also the son of a blond woman who is the President of the United States. All his ill-gotten gains went to her Presidential campaign, in particular, the money helped swing the vote in a handful of key counties. Counties, mind you, not states. That's how close elections are sometimes.

His chief of security warns him that he cannot protect him from the Beekeeper, so his best chance of survival is to go to mom's house. Presumably the Secret Service will be able to deal with the Beekeeper. Ha. Is to laugh. Mom and son go to the 'beach house', some palatial mansion defended by phalanx of coppers of various flavors. (Why am I not impressed?) Just in case you have any doubt about what kind  of sleazeball the son is, we have him snorting coke off of his dead father's desk.

Now we need an excuse to execute this guy, I mean we have witnesses after all, but shithead kindly provides one by holding a gun to his mother's head. No problemo, the BeeKeeper doesn't hesitate because everyone knows the Beekeeper never misses.