THE BEEKEEPER

The Beekeeper sounds, on paper, like exactly the sort of nonsense that we need mid-January. Jason Statham setting the world on fire for hurting someone he cared about. What could go wrong?

Well, the films opening is surprisingly, and infuriatingly slow. No one is going to The Beekeeper for world building or backstory, they are going to see Jason Statham and excessive action, yet director David Ayer and screenwriter Kurt Wimmer seem intent on sidelining this for a good half hour.

There are a couple of good action set pieces in its opening, but far too long is spent on introducing a myriad of different characters that the film really does not need. 

For example, Emmy Raver-Lampman, playing FBI agent Verona Parker) is good in her role, its just that the role itself is largely superfluous to the plot. If you removed her, and her scenes, very little would actually change. 

She is irrelevant to Clays motivation, irrelevant to the the movies antagonist, and pretty much everything that happens, would happen without her

So why is she there? And why do we have to spend time with her and away from the action?

She is introduced as the daughter of the victim, but other than a couple of early shots of her waking up on the sofa hungover (basic Hollywood shorthand for trauma), nothing in her behaviour shows any real emotional connection to the crime. Her character is just that of a standard FBI agent. Almost like at the 15 minute mark the film forgets about her emotional connections to it. 

Similarly Jeremy Irons’s Wallace Westwyld doesn’t really have a reason to be there. He does a couple of things that may drive the plot forward, but these plot points could easily have been given to someone else. Instead we have to endure him droning on about secret government agencies, and flirting with Jemma Redgrave (a plot point that goes absolutely nowhere).

It feels like he is there to act as the exposition, but The Beekeeper isn’t particularly a film that needs it. It’s fairly obvious what’s going on from the start and we really don’t need an entire first act intent on slapping us in the face with it.

It can’t help but feel like they’re trying to get a franchise off the ground, before the film has even been released, and this harms it. Because by the time the fun starts to happen it feels jarring after what has come before.

After half an hour of mainly conversation to have a wacky, over the top, mini-gun fight scene felt wrong. Don’t get me wrong, it was good fun, and well put together, but it felt out of place with what had come before. 

Yet this is the tone that the film then strikes for the remainder of its run time. Again, almost forgetting that its first act was a slow paced, story led thriller, and just aiming for balls-out fun instead.

If the aim here was to set up a franchise, it was a risk that may not pay off. Whilst not opening terribly at the box office it doesn’t look set to hit the kind of numbers that gets Hollywood excited.

Once we do get out of the drudgery of the first act, The Beekeeper does begin to improve. There are some enjoyable fight scenes - with some pretty brutal action - a host of over the top side characters and mercenaries for Statham to fight, and a final location that feels like a Hitman-esque sandbox level.

It does try to lever in some political social commentary that doesn’t quite land, but more often than not director David Ayer seems happy to just let Jason Statham do his thing, punching, shooting, and kicking his way through the hive.

Statham himself is… himself. The Beekeeper doesn’t perhaps make the most of his comic chops, but his action is as entertaining as ever. You know what you're getting with the Stath and he duly delivers here.

There is fun to be had with The Beekeeper but it does ask you to wade through a laborious first act to get there. There is some good action and fun characters, but the overall world of the film just isn’t interesting enough to hold it together.

While the fun it delivers in its latter stages is not enough to offset the dullness of its opening, it is not a terrible way to spend the evening, but it will not generate enough buzz to make audiences swarm to the cinemas for a sequel.

Expect this would-be franchise to buzz off (sorry…).