Movie Review: The Beekeeper

About halfway through "The Beekeeper," I realized what my favorite type of movie is, what I am dubbing "messed with the wrong person." Think of movies like "Taken," "John Wick" or "The Equalizer." These are the movies where some random person does something to a person, to quote "Taken," "with a very particular set of skills," they spend the rest of the movie regretting killing Keanu Reeve's dog or kidnapping Liam Neeson's daughter. Jason Statham is an actor who has made a few movies like this.

Adam Clay (Statham) is a beekeeper renting Eloise Parker's (Phylicia Rashad) barn. One day, she falls for an online scam and has her bank accounts drained. In her despair, she commits suicide. Clay, who used to work in a secret government program, uses his skills to bring down the people who prey on the vulnerable. All the while, he is being pursued by the FBI and the company behind the scammers.

I need to get this out of the way. I will watch any movie with Jason Statham in it. He doesn't always make great movies, but he does make fun movies. I have never regretted watching one of his movies. With that bias in mind, I shall continue with the review.

I had an absolute blast with this movie. The dialogue is terrible, and the plot boils down to a "John Wick" ripoff, but it was so much fun. It is a movie where there is no grey area. There are good guys, and there are bad guys. There are no bad guys who might be redeemable, which is a plot device I think it used WAY too much. Statham beats up the bad guys and does so effortlessly. Could the movie have made it difficult for him? Yeah, but sometimes that doesn't matter.

One of my favorite genres with an actor who always makes fun movies and it's under two hours? This is basically Matt Levy catnip. It would have to be pretty terrible for me not to have liked it. Is it a great movie? Absolutely not. I was never expecting it to be.

7/10

Rated R for pervasive language, drug use, some sexual references, and strong violence throughout

1h 45m