My Thoughts on "The Beekeeper 🐝"
I just watched The Beekeeper 🐝, the latest Jason Statham action movie from director, David Ayer. Now, I haven't really seen that many of David Ayer's movies. The only I've only really seen before this one is Suicide Squad (2016), but that wasn't really his movie. It was reshot and was re-edited, and cut up a bunch of times, until it was some Frankenstein's monster that barely resembled what David Ayer had originally intended. Suicide Squad (2016) was a movie that was made by committee. It was taken out of the director's hands, and tampered with by the studio who tried to make it more like Guardians of the Galaxy, and it failed. I am still rooting for an Ayer Cut of Suicide Squad (2016), even if one will probably never come out.
I am also interested in seeing some of his other movies like End of Watch, Fury (despite how much criticism that movie got for how historically inaccurate it was), and even The Tax Collector. Yes, Shia LaBeouf's a pretty controversial actor, and I know The Tax Collector hasn't gotten the best reviews, but I'm willing to check it out if it's still available. It was released straight to streaming because of the pandemic 🦠😷, on Hulu I believe, and last time I heard, it was removed from Hulu. I don't know if it was ever given a physical release on DVD 📀 and Blu-Ray 💿. So, I don't know how widely available The Tax Collector is. But if it is still available somewhere, somehow, I'll definitely check it out.
But anyway, he directed this movie, and Jason Statham stars in it, so what did I think about it? I thought it was a really good. It was an awesome action movie. I really needed that after watching Mortal Kombat Legends: Cage Match 🐉🥊, that movie was a letdown for me. I didn't even really the highest hopes for it, like I didn't expect it to be that good. Mostly because it was about Johnny Cage, and Johnny Cage is not one of my favorite characters in Mortal Kombat. But, I was willing to give it a chance, I was willing to be surprised, just like I was with Mortal Kombat Legends: Snow Blind ❄️🐉, and I was still letdown by it. It wasn't very good. It was okay at best, bad at worst. So, I really needed an actual good movie to watch after watching that lame ass Cage Match 🐉🥊 and The Beekeeper 🐝 was that movie for me. Jason Statham kicked absolute ass in this movie.
The funny things is that after Expendables 4 (or Expend4bles if you prefer) everyone kind of expected this movie to be bad, but it's not. It's actually really good 👍😁. It's so good in fact that I'll say that it's one of the best action movies I've ever seen. But, I never doubted this movie. While, everyone else kept saying that it was going suck, I always held out hope that it would be good, and that hope paid off. I was entertained by this movie from start to finish. It will go down as one of the best revenge flicks in the past couple of years, right up where with John Wick, The Equalizer, and Nobody. I haven't seen Nobody yet, but I really hope to sometime in the future because it looks like a really good movie.
I just wish I could've seen it in theaters. But, VUDU's fine I guess. I definitely get the Blu-Ray 💿 if even it comes out on Blu-Ray 💿. It's an MGM movie, and MGM is currently owned by Amazon, so I really don't know. They aren't as hostile towards physical media, they're not as closed minded to it as Netflix, but you just never know these days.
Now, I really like Jason Statham. He's probably one of my favorite action stars working right now. I even bought a Blu-Ray 💿 compilation that had six of his movies, including Transporter 3, War (2007), Wild Card ♠️♥️♣️, The Bank Job, Crank, and Crank 2: High Voltage ⚡️. I even like Hobbs & Shaw, I know not everyone likes that movie, but I was entertained by it. I am bothered by the fact that he had it written his contract recently that he cannot lose any fights in movies.
He's joined a couple of action stars who have similar stipulations in their contracts, that they can't lose fights when they do action movies. Dwayne Johnson has that same thing written in his contract too. I think John Cena might also have that in his contract, but I'm not quite sure about, but I wouldn't be surprised if he did. And while this sort of thing can create a problem, especially when he's facing against someone of a similar caliber or someone's even better than him, like Iko Uwais in Expend4ables, but in this case, it works.
Just like Tyler Nichols from JoBlo Originals said in his review of this movie, having Jason Statham not lose a fight because of what he has written in his contract does benefit him in this role as Adam Clay, the titular Beekeeper 🐝. It helps give him the aura of invincibility that this character needed. The whole idea of the Beekeeper 🐝 and the Beekeeper program 🐝 as a whole is that they're the best of the best. They're better trained than your typical CIA agent, and they can kill pretty much anyone with whatever weapon's available to them, and however they see fit. It's all in service to the Hive.
So, obviously, you don't really want him to lose a fight so that he can believable as this invincible or an unstoppable killing machine who tear through a room full of security guards, FBI agents, mercenaries, and Secret Service agents no problem. In that sense, Jason Statham was perfectly cast, and he really sells this role. He's really carrying this movie on his shoulders, even though does have other great actors like Jeremy Irons, Phylicia Rashad, Emmy Raver-Lampson, and Josh Hutcherson.
I really like the concept of the Beekeepers 🐝, I really that's a cool and interesting concept. We don't learn a lot about the Beekeeper program 🐝, but what we see of it in this movie is really cool. I'm just fascinated by the idea of this secret program within the CIA, or within the American intelligence community 🇺🇸 that operates outside of the norms, outside of the normal laws and oversight, and kills anyone they want at a time of their choosing, and in a way of their choosing.
If you're targeted by a Beekeeper 🐝, you might as well just give up. Your life is over, there's no hope for you, there's nothing you can do. Everyone who knows about the Beekeepers 🐝 in this movie is afraid of them, and pretty tells the main bad guy, Josh Hutcherson's character, that he pretty much signed his own death warrant by pissing off this guy, for disturbing a Beekeeper 🐝. It's sort of like the secretive CIA program in the Bourne movies, with Treadstone and all that, but here they have a whole bee theme 🐝 going on. Their agents are referred to as Beekeepers 🐝. I really like their analog computers. They use these old school computers from the 70s and 80s, with the green text, and the big keys, and the loud printers. I really like that. It shows that these guys really are different from the normal CIA.
But, Clay is retired, he's left the agency and just wants to live a quiet and peaceful life being an actual beekeeper 🐝, making honey 🍯 for his neighbors. But, then he pretty much has to come out of retirement to avenge the death of one of his neighbors who was driven to suicide after she got scammed and had all of her money 💵 stolen from her by these asshole cyber criminals, these phone scammers.
They tricked her into emptying all out of her accounts, and she just lost everything, including her retirement money 💵. She just lost the will to live because she had lost everything, and had everything stolen from her by these goons, and she just took her own life. And Clay is understandably upset by this because she was his friend, she took care of him in a way, and he took care of her. So, he feels morally obligated to stand out, and avenge her death, and kill every last one of the assholes who stole her money 💵 and stole money 💵 from other people like her.
He follows the money 💵, and it goes all the way to the top to the President's son, who's Josh Hutcherson's character. He's the mastermind of this whole operation, he's the ring leader or king of this criminal empire that he's built up, and he's using CIA software to do it. He even used that software to gain some campaign funds 💵 through illicit means to help his mom get elected as President of the United States 🇺🇸. Now, he's on Clay's hit list.
But, he has the former CIA director working for him, a guy named Wallace Westwyld (played by Jeremy Irons) who's corrupt as hell himself, to protect him, and hopefully stop Clay from reaching him. Being that he was the CIA director at one time, Wallace has a lot of connections, and he does everything in his power, whatever power he still has to try to defeat Clay before he can kill the President's son. He even hires another Beekeeper 🐝, a Beekeeper 🐝 who's still active, and was Clay's replacement to try and kill him, and that doesn't work out.
That whole fight scene where Clay fight that other Beekeeper 🐝 at that gas station ⛽️ was pretty cool. Even she didn't win obviously, it was cool to see another Beekeeper 🐝 and see what the other ones besides Clay are capable of. They're all like that pretty much. They're all super soldiers essentially, super assassins, who no ordinary CIA agent would stand a chance against. It would've been cool if there was a rival agency or rival program to the Beekeepers 🐝 like the Bear Watchers or Bear Wranglers 🐻, who are also these bad secret assassins, but they have a bear theme 🐻 since bears 🐻 eat honey 🍯 which is produced by bees 🐝, so they're the natural enemies of bees 🐝, and thus would be the natural enemy of the Beekeepers 🐝. Maybe, in the sequel if they do make a sequel to this movie. I hope they do, that would be pretty cool. But, if it stays a stand alone movie, that's fine.
But anyway, the Beekeeper 🐝 that he sent to kill Clay failed, doesn't kill him, and Wallace hires some mercenaries to protect the other building where this phone scam operation is taking place, and that doesn't work either. Nothing that they throw at Clay works. He's an unstoppable killing machine, and there's nothing that they could do, but sit and wait to meet their grisly fates. And you're with him every step of the way. You're rooting for Clay to kill these guys because they are terrible people.
They scam and steal money 💵 from innocent people, including elderly people, ruin their lives and even drive them to suicide in some cases, and then they just laugh and giggle about it while the reap the rewards of their ill-gotten gains 🤑. This is especially the case with Josh Hutcherson's character, the President's criminal son. He is such an asshole, he does horrible things, is such an insufferable douche about it. You want to see him get wasted by Clay. So, if anyone deserves to die, it's definitely these people. This movie probably wouldn't have worked as if these people, the villains, were in anyway sympathetic.
One last thing I want to talk about before I close this out is I like how the movie looks. They use a lot of yellows and oranges throughout the movie because it's about a beekeeper 🐝, who's apart of a secret CIA program called the Beekeepers 🐝, and it has do with bees 🐝. It gives the movie a very unique look, and I really liked it. This movie was gorgeously shot, lit, and color graded. The action scenes were well choreographed and well filmed. You could see everything that was happening, and it looked really cool. The kills were brutal, like these are some of the most brutal kills I've seen in an action movie since The Equalizer 3, which is another awesome movie. I highly recommend that one too.
Speaking of which I loved this movie obviously. I've been gushing about it this whole review. And I do recommend it if you haven't seen it yet. Like, if you were someone who was hesitant to see it because it had Jason Statham in it, and you hated Expend4bles, or avoided it because of all the bad stuff you heard about it, I can confidently say you have nothing to worry about. This movie is awesome, you'll have a lot of fun with it. If you like the John Wick movies, if you like the Equalizer movies, and if you like Nobody, you'll definitely like this movie a lot too.
It's crazy how of all the major movies that have been released so far this year, this one is still the best. Argylle and Madame Web were both busts 👎, and I haven't really heard that many things about Mean Girls (2024), but what I have heard about it is pretty mixed or negative. People don't like it nearly as much as the 2004 original, the one with Lindsay Lohan. So yeah, The Beekeeper 🐝 is the early winner of 2024, in the months of January and February in my eyes.
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