Jason Statham is John Wick.

As much as I make fun of the guy from time to time, I actually enjoy and respect Jason Statham for his work in the action genre. Sure he’s kinda taking sloppy seconds from guys like Sylvester Stallone now that Stallone is full of too much botox and beef broth injections to hold his own Johnson when he wakes up for his sixth piss at three in the morning, but Statham does have his own charm to things. Plus he still manages to pull off the energetic look at age 56. By the time I’m 56 I’ll be dead because ain’t no way in hell I’m letting myself live to 56. I’ve got a good 15 years left on this planet.

But enough about me; The Beekeeper was directed by David Ayer and more importantly it wasn’t written by David Ayer so we know the writing might be halfway decent. Actually that’s not true, the writing doesn’t matter in a film like this. Ayer’s career has been writing movies whose writing is either unimportant or total hog shit. He wrote the original The Fast and the Furious and the actors could have improv’d their lines. More on Fast and Furious at some point in the near future. He also wrote Suicide Squad and no, not the good one. The one where Jared Leto says “I’m not gonna kill you, I’m just gonna hurt you real bad.”

David Ayer’s next film is Levon’s Trade, a film about a guy played by Jason Statham who happens to be a John Wick-tier badass who wants to lead a peaceful life but is forced out of retirement after something bad happens to someone he cares about. The Beekeeper is his current latest title, a film about a guy played by Jason Statham who happens to be a John Wick-tier badass who wants to lead a peaceful life but is forced out of retirement after something bad happens to someone he cares about.

The film was written by Kurt Wimmer, one of the few people who might make Ayer’s writing look competent. Wimmer wrote Expend4bles, who cares. He also wrote one of 2020’s worst films Children of the Corn, which was a bad enough movie in itself but the writing? That dragged it down even further. He also wrote the Point Break remake, the Total Recall remake, and Law Abiding Citizen. The only awards Kurt Wimmer can hope to be nominated for and potentially win are Razzies and he doesn’t even win those.

Anyway, The Beekeeper is what we call in the biz a crowd pleaser movie. It doesn’t break any new ground, but it plays to the crowd and gives them what they want based on the climate of society at the time. For instance; what do people hate right now? Crypto bros. They hate tech scams, they hate the idea of the elderly being taken advantage of, and over the last couple of years there’s been a big rise in YouTubers like Kitboga have made big careers out of taking scam call centers out of operation. People like to see justice dealt to those they hate, and granted some liberties were made to make this film exciting.

Jason Statham plays Adam Clay, a totally normal beekeeper who keeps bees, takes care of wasps, and makes honey for his neighbors. Particularly one neighbor, Eloise Parker played by Phylicia Rashad. Parker gets trapped in a ransomware scam thanks to Mickey Garnett (David Witts) who is an indicator on the genius of the casting director. All the bad guys in this film have the most punchable faces and personalities I’ve seen in a while. If you assaulted Mickey (the character, not the actor) while standing in line at a Starbucks when the cop showed up he’d probably join you. Parker blows her brains out after Garnett steals all her savings, and that puts Clay into action.

To refer to The Beekeeper as Dollar Store John Wick would be insulting, because Jason Statham is more talented than that. If John Wick is graded Wagyu beef, The Beekeeper is the fake, moderately convincing stuff they sell. Honestly the worst offense of this film is coming out after four John Wick movies because there’s no way it can avoid taking that title. But Garnett is a middle man and one of several call centers working on American soil and evading the law. Particularly two FBI agents Verona Parker (ZEmmy Raver-Lampman) and Matt Wiley (Bobby Naderi). I don’t have much to say about the agents because much like Wimmer’s writing talent they are barely functional.

The big baddie of all this is Josh Hutcherson who plays Derek Danforth, a man whose face and name make you want to punch him. And I like Josh Hutcherson, he’s so great at his roles that he makes you genuinely despise his character, and that’s great acting. And again I really like Jason Statham, he can take crappy lines and deliver them in a way that make them sound pretty good. Also I love the dude’s bravado in this film.

Clay is a retired member of a group called The Beekeepers, a secret society of secret people who secretly carry out secret missions. What this means is Clay has the utmost of plot armor. There’s a few parts in this film that are beat for beat stripped right out of John Wick, and I’d comment on similarities between this and the other three films but I haven’t seen them. Unfortunately from what I’ve seen of John Wick, that series has a really intricate plot underneath it all. The Beekeepers are just a name with a convoluted metaphor wrapped around it to justify the name.

But the point is that Jason Statham murders hipsters who talk about AI and crypto and shit and bombs their call centers, so it’s something we can all appreciate. They made it so the call center has the same energy as the Wolf of Wall Street, which I doubt was a coincidence. The dudes that lead the call centers talk like televangelists, and everyone is shown as a one dimensional evil villain. However you’ll notice they are all in the states.

I have a theory for this and the theory is that they changed it up to make the film good. It’s flashy, there’s a lot of props to blow up, a lot of big servers to throw people into, tall buildings to infiltrate. If the film was more realistic the call centers would be in some shit hole in India and instead of American hipsters it’d be a bunch of unwashed dudes in an office that smells like sweat and crotch pretending they are Steve calling from Texasland. While someone might like that premise for a film, overall it’d just be sad to watch these guys finish scamming someone and then go shit in the street.

The Beekeeper feels like the kind of movie that requires a real stinger of a sentence so let me take a swing at it. The Beekeeper’s nectar may be derivative, but it’s still pretty sweet. Kurt Wimmer is 60 years old and will never be a talented writer or director. The rating of this movie is not a pun. The Beekeeper is enjoyable junk food action schlock.

Rating: B+