The Beekeeper

One man's brutal campaign for personal vengeance could lead to consequences on a national scale after it's revealed that he was once a secret operative for a clandestine organization known as… The Beekeepers.

The Beekeepers, huh?

All right then… secret agent beekeepers it is, I guess. This is what you’re doing, so I will accept this, and move on. Sometimes that’s just what you have to do with a movie, especially when they warn you upfront like this. “Here’s our silly premise, take it or leave it.” I am going to take it. Wish me luck.

Of course, immediately upon doing that, right away, the next potential issue hits me right in the face…

This is a fim by David Ayer.

David Ayer is a really talented filmmaker, with a great eye, but he is also a filmmaker who has only ever disappointed me, so that’s not the best thing to realize right at the start of the film. I wasn’t aware that this film—the latest riff on the whole John Wick story, the “world’s greatest assassin is mad” thing, which is currently the action movie plot du jour—was one of his. If I had been, I might not have bothered renting it, but here we are. That particular milk has beens spilled. I guess I will just accept this too, and move on.

Besides, it’s not like I can get my $3 back, so...

In this film, Jason Stratham is happily retired, and living as a noble beekeeper, a simple caretaker of that most important link in the chain that makes up the great circle of life. He was also once a Beekeeper, with a capital B, which is the position held by a single specific secret agent, someone who acts as the extremely dangerous tip of the spear that is the most clandestine of clandestine U.S. intelligence agencies. Its mandate… to protect the hive.

Society is the hive, and we’re the bees… Get it?

That’s why he’s the Beekeeper.

Get it?

When Mr. The Beekeeper’s only friend in the world, kindly old Claire Huxtable, gets scammed online, and her accounts are hacked and drained, including the charities she oversees, she commits suicide in shame. When her Special Agent in the FBI daughter smells something off, and begins investigating her mother’s death, she crosses paths with this most honorable warden of both our tiny pollinating friends AND America in general, a man who is now… buzzing… with the need for revenge.

It soon becomes apparent that there are a lot of bad guys who need killin’ for this crime—a lot—but the main douchebag bad guy responsible is also the main guy from the tv show Future Man, which I loved, and totally recommend if you like sarcastic nerd/time travel/The One/apocalyptic/video game sci-fi comedies, which might be a niche crowd, admittedly. He is also the boy in The Hunger Games whose skill with frosting made him a camouflaging expert somehow. Here, he plays a whiny, entitled, cruel, vicious, and toxic asshole man-child of extreme wealth and privilege, a shitty little white boy who just so happens to also be the son of the President of the United States! Well, well, well… check out The Beekeeper movie making some very pointed commentary on not only the main problem currently infecting this country, but the root of that problem too. (pssst… it’s their parents and their parents’ hoarded wealth, as well as the very system that they all support…)

This was unexpected! Well played, The Beekeeper, well played… Also Jeremy Irons and Minnie Driver show up, which was also unexpected, so that’s nice too.

The plot is basically that these douchey bros’ actions have not only personally impacted the Beekeeper, but on a larger scale, those actions are threatening the Hive, and this also upsets the Beekeeper, so now he is coming out of Beekeeper (capital B) retirement to sting the fuck out of them… with bullets. And fists. And also knives. And really, anything else that might be close at hand.

Did you know that there’s a kind of bee in the hive called a Queen Slayer? Did you also know that the Queen Slayer’s job is to kill the Queen Bee should she fail in her Queen Bee duties, thus threatening the good of the hive? This film sure does, and by the time the credits run, they’re going make sure that you do too. Also, if society was a beehive, guess what kind of bee that Jason Stratham’s character is most like, as he climbs up an absolute pile of dead bodies that he makes out of the bad guys, as he is working his way to the very top?

Go on… guess.

Admittedly, it really is pretty satisfying watching Jason Stratham beat the absolute unholy shit out of the scumbag Ed Hardy-wearing, Axe body spray-reeking scammer bad guys, not to mention the plethora of cops working their asses off to protect those guys, because that’s pretty much what this whole film is… Jason Stratham walking into a non-descript office building, sniffing out the cluster of D-bags huddled in the Call Center contained within, beating the shit out of all of them, often in cruelly inventive ways, and then blowing up the building. It’s good stuff. I enjoyed it. Honestly, if I had any complaints at all about this silly little actioneer, it’d be that maybe it’s not vicious enough when it comes to wrecking shop on a bunch of tech bros with terrible taste in clothing. I know I certainly could’ve stood to see more gore and screaming in general. Of course, all of that having been said, the elevator shaft kill in particular was pretty fan-fucking-tastic.

Seriously though, let’s just say for the moment that you’re a regular beat cop, taking what they’re giving ‘cause you’re working for a living, and you’ve just answered a call about some bad ass at the President’s vacation home, wading through cops and secret service like a stoned me at an Indian food buffet… I don’t even know what crime that’d be… “We have an Excessive Amount of Ass Kicking in progress…” Whatever it was, the call went out, and your unimpressive regular-ass cop-self answered, and you have just watched some bald leprechaun in a shiny suit jacket and a black turtleneck fight his way up a circular staircase to where you’re standing, watching as he breaks limbs and faces along the way, spraying blood everywhere, mowing down the dozens of colorful mercenaries and SWAT cops in his way, and now finally, here he is at last, at the top of the stairs, standing right in front of you, you who is nothing but a pudgy beat cop who somehow lost their gun… Why would you try to knife fight him, my man? This blood-crazed little imp? Why? It’s just a job, buddy. Walk away, my dude.

Walk away.

Too late. You’re dead.

This film isn’t “good” but it’s a lot of fun. I think I’d call it my favorite David Ayers film, which is a low bar, sure, but still… The Beekeeper cleared it.

And the biggest reason why is that there is an undefinable 80s action movie feel to this film that is really just fantastic. Watching the film, I had to wonder if David Ayers did this on purpose? Was this his modern day update love letter to ridiculous 80’s era action movies?

I think so, maybe.

I wonder this because of a few things like, for instance, how instead of using the currently very en vogue rockabilly Eastern European look the John Wick films favor, the secret society of The Beekeepers all use old Apple 2E computers, and cell phones with thick antennas. Was this particular aesthetic specifically chosen to compliment the previously mentioned 80s feel of the themes, set-ups, and tropes of the script?

I wonder.

This seems even more likely when you realize that Jason Stratham is probably the most 80s-ish action star working today. If this film had been made back in the 80s, the Beekeeper may not have been a film on the level of a Schwarzenegger or a Stallone at their peak type of thing, but it could’ve very easily starred someone like Steven Seagal, or Jean Claude Van Damme, or in a more perfect world… Fred Ward, and that is totally what Stratham’s level is.

God… Imagine how awesome a Fred Ward version of this movie might’ve been.

R.I.P. to a legend.