The Beekeeper

One man's brutal campaign for personal vengeance could lead to consequences on a national scale when it's revealed 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, the next potential issue hits me right square in the face…

This is a fim by David Ayer.

While David Ayer is a really talented filmmaker, with a great eye, he is also a filmmaker who has only ever disappointed me, so that this is one of his films isn't really the best news to share with me right as the film was starting. I wasn’t aware that this film–the latest riff on the whole “world’s greatest assassin is mad because reasons” 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 been spilled. I guess I will also have to accept this and move on.

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

As the movie begins, Jason Stratham, the titular beekeeper, is happily retired, and is now living as a noble beekeeper, a simple caretaker of that most important link in the chain that makes up the great circle of life. We soon learn that 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. And in this metaphor, the hive is society, which means that we’re the bees... That’s why he’s the Beekeeper.

Get it?

Anyway, when Mr. The Beekeeper’s only friend in the world, kindly old Claire Huxtable, gets scammed online, her accounts 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 investigates her mother’s death, she almost immediately 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.

Turns out, there are a lot of bad guys out there 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, a show I loved and totally recommend, if you also happen to like sarcastic time travel/apocalyptic/video game sci-fi adventure comedies about The One, 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 little big baby asshole of a man-child, the natural result 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 making some very pointed political commentary on not only the main problem currently infecting this country, but the root of that problem too. (pssst… it’s the white kids and their white parents and the massive piles of their white parents’ hoarded wealth, otherwise known as the very system that they all support…) This was unexpected!

Well played, The Beekeeper, well played…

Also Jeremy Irons and Minnie Driver both show up in the film, which was also unexpected, so that’s nice too.

The plot of The Beekeeper 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, a fact that 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. Also knives.

Really, anything close at hand, honestly.

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? Thr film sure does, and by the time the credits run, they’re going make sure that you do too.

Also, if one were to say that society was much like a beehive, what kind of bee would you guess that Jason Stratham’s character is most like, as he steadily climbs an absolute pile of bad guy dead bodies on his way to the very top?

Go on, guess.

It really is pretty satisfying time watching Jason Stratham beat the absolute shit out of the scumbag Ed Hardy-wearing, Axe body spray-reeking scammer bad guys in this movie, not to mention the plethora of cops working their asses off to protect those guys, because that’s pretty much what this film is… Jason Stratham walking into a non-descript office building, sniffing out the cluster of D-bags inside, then beating the shit out of them, often in cruelly inventive ways, before burning down and/or 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 would’ve enjoyed seeing a bit more gore and screaming in general. Of course, 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... a former D student who wasn't very popular or athletic or interesting, and definitely not very bright, probably with an inferiority complex and a chip on your shoulder because of that, who didn't have a whole options post-high school, so you manage to stumble your way through the police training course, and you get hired on as a dead-ender, nothing but a Redshirt in blue, grinding your life away, your stupid little heart dreaming of a pair of jet skis someday, taking what they’re giving ‘cause you’re working for a living, and one day... you answer a call about some crazy little ninja or something, who is at the President’s vacation home, wading through cops and secret service like a Stoned Me at an Indian food buffet… I'm not even sure what crime this would even be exactly: “All available units, all available units... We have an Excessive Amount of Ass Kicking in progress…” Whatever it is, the call goes out, and your unimpressive regular-ass cop-self answered.

What a hero.

So you show up, and now you're watching this bald leprechaun in a shiny suit jacket and a black turtleneck fight his way up a circular staircase to where you’re standing. You're standing there with a 9mm baretta, watching as he breaks limbs and faces with what can only be called a monstrous balletic grace, 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 are nothing but some pudgy beat cop who realizes right then that you have somehow lost your gun…

Why would you try to knife fight this guy, 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.

The Beekeeper isn’t “good” but it’s a lot of fun.

I think I’d call this my favorite David Ayers film, which is a pretty low bar, sure, but still… The Beekeeper cleared it easily. And the biggest reason why is there is an undefinable 80s action movie feel to this film that is really just fantastic. Watching this movie and seeing how, instead of going with the currently en vogue rockabilly Eastern European look that the John Wick films and their bastard children favor, The Beekeepers' secret society use Apple 2E computers and cell phones with thick antennas, I had to wonder... Was this aesthetic chosen to compliment the general 80s action movie feel of the script? if David Ayers do all this on purpose? Was this his love letter to all those ridiculous 80’s era action movies we know and love?

I think so, maybe.

This seems even more likely when you realize that Jason Stratham is probably the most 80s-ish action star working today. If The Beekeeper had been made back in the 80s, it wouldn't have starred Schwarzenegger or Stallone (at least, not Stallone at his peak, Cobra era Stallone, maybe), this movie would’ve starred someone like Steven Seagal or Jean Claude Van Damme, or in a perfect world… Fred Ward, and that is totally who Jason Stratham is today

God… Imagine how awesome an 80's Fred Ward version of this movie might’ve been. R.I.P. to a legend.

Anyway, The Beekeeper is a good time. Check it out.