“To bee or not to bee?” That is a question asked to Jason Statham in “The Beekeeper,” a delirious entry in the thriving genre of action flicks about gunslingers who list a different career on their LinkedIn. (See also: “The Painter” and “The Bricklayer,” both released just last week.) The director David Ayer’s previous shoot-em-up, “The Tax Collector,” was woefully short on quips about audits. He and the screenwriter Kurt Wimmer have not made that mistake here. Take a swig of mead every time Statham vows to protect the hive — by which he means society — and you’ll have a fine time. Either way, you won’t remember a thing about the plot.
Statham (“The Mechanic,” “The Transporter”) plays Adam Clay, an honest-to-goodness beekeeper who opens the film jarring honey. (Kudos to the costumer Kelli Jones for designing a slim-cut quilted beekeeping suit that gives Statham the panache of a fencer.) In the first minutes, his landlord, a kindly retiree named Eloise (Phylicia Rashad) loses her life savings to a network of internet scammers who prey on the older and the naïve. This cabal of techno thieves rakes in millions every day and boasts the political connections to use the Delta Force and SEAL Team 6 as bodyguards. They’re still no match for a guy who can wipe out a hornet’s nest with a stun gun. As a corrupt former C.I.A. head (Jeremy Irons) sighs, “If a beekeeper says you’re going to die, you’re going to die.”
The script’s ridiculous rationale — which our hero repeatedly intones like he’s hypnotizing us to believe it — is that certain beekeepers have pledged to prevent colony collapse, both apoidea and homo sapien. Sure, that’ll do. No less a scribe than William Shakespeare claimed that bees “teach the act of order to a peopled kingdom.”
Really, Statham is simply the embodiment of death. There’s no hesitation, no heightened escalation, just kill kill kill. The fight choreography and editing are bludgeoning, though there’s a nifty cut where a goon gets flung over the camera and the cinematographer Gabriel Beristain flips around to watch the man’s body tumble down the stairs. When a marvelous heavy (Taylor James) slides on brass knuckles, the sound of a punch was so startling that I jumped (and giggled).
Things drag whenever “The Beekeeper” goes through the motions of being sensible. There’s endless scenes of panicky phone calls and a go-nowhere moral debate between outsider justice and civilized law featuring Eloise’s daughter, Verona (Emmy Raver-Lampman), a heavy-boozing, monomaniacal F.B.I. agent who I suspect was funnier on the page. I’d forgo her subplot for more of Ayer’s giddy villains: the call center creepazoids Mickey (David Witts) and Rico (Enzo Cilenti), their skateboarding tech bro boss, Derek (Josh Hutcherson), and a rival bee freak, Anisette (Megan Le), who enters screaming and exits far too soon.
Statham excels as a straight-faced goof. Between his glower and the movie’s high-quality production values, this brain cell-destroying schlock resembles an earnest drama. Yet, Ayer makes it plain that he’s in on the joke. As Statham lays waste to a camo-clad squadron, the shoulder patches on their uniforms read: BS.
The Beekeeper
Rated R for stinging language and violence. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters.
