If you’re not in the market for what David Ayer is forcefully selling in batty January thriller The Beekeeper at the point when someone says to the titular character, “To bee or not to bee, that is the bloody question,” then you might as well just give up and walk out. By this stage, late in the film, Ayer and screenwriter Kurt Wimmer have given us just about enough bee puns, bone cracks and bizarre cameos from British actors to give those in the right headspace (read: drunk) a solid, low-stakes, medium-reward new year’s effort. I can’t imagine a devoted Beekeeper hive emerging any time soon (it’s far too derivative and far too rough around the edges), but there’s enough energy and well-pitched silliness to have audiences, ahem, swarming to cinemas this weekend.
It’s primed as Jason Statham’s John Wick (not that the actor needs another franchise since out of his last 10 movies, only two were not part of a series) and its desperation to be so can often be distracting, but in a crowded landscape of equally desperate imitators, it makes a more persuasive case than most. Statham knows exactly what to do here, more than most would, and has figured out just how seriously, or not, to take such material. During the cold open, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this was going to be more serious than most. He plays a withdrawn beekeeper working on land owned by a retired teacher, played by the luminous and wasted Phylicia Rashad. In a surprisingly wrenching set-up, she gets hoodwinked by a crooked call centre into allowing access to her accounts, leading to automatic bankruptcy and a self-inflicted bullet through the head. Statham is spurred into tackling the system that preyed on her and so a mission begins.
