Movie Review: The Beekeeper is astonishingly bad and entertainingly good
Action heroes have had a very active participation in film and television for decades, each generation has seen and had their favorites and it is a genre that is popular among locals and strangers.
These productions have an already established rule: the actors evolve and adapt to new media, leaving the baton to others. During the 80s and 90’s we saw the birth of those who are now great stars of celluloid, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Bruce Willis, Wesley Snipes, Harrison Ford, Steven Seagal, Kurt Russell, Jackie Chan Mel Gibson among many others.
The new generation of heroes has brought with them diverse and varied stories ranging from the fight against drug traffickers, white slavery, kidnappings, conspiracies, large-scale robberies, and everything attached to the modernity of the time in which we live being Tom Cruise, Dwayne Johnson, Keanu Reeves, Liam Neeson, John Cena, Robert Downey Jr, Chris Hemsworth, Ryan Reynolds, Chris Evans, Vin Diesel, and Jason Statham who are now in charge of taking the action to a new level.
With productions that range from the most complex and successful to the simplest that end up being part of a catalog on some Sreeaming platform, good, average, bad, and very bad productions make it clear to us that there is everything for everyone, the director At the beginning of 2024, David Ayer presents a film that complies with the rules with a different approach, The Beekeeper raises how dangerous modernity can be.
What is the film about?
The so-called Beekeepers are elements that form and apply a special program outside of any chain of command, men and women work ruthlessly during the most extreme circumstances involving a national emergency, when Adam Clay (Jason Statham), a retired Beekeeper, discovers a conspiracy in The highest levels of the government will have to unlock all their knowledge and defense mechanisms to fulfill a new mission, revenge against those who believe they are untouchable and above the law.
We cannot deny that this genre is extremely entertaining, having a premiere like this in which we see the actor Jason Statham flaunting everything he knows about martial arts and fighting is extremely pleasant for those who like this type of film, the idea That there is a “secret” elite that brings order where others cannot is extremely cliché and trite, here there is absolutely nothing new or anything that enriches but there is something that entertains.
Adam Clay is a stealthy ex-combatant who seeks revenge in the purest style of hitting, kicking, shooting, and chasing against those technicians who profit by using the internet and electronic media to rob people online, Clay is a modern and updated version that reminds us of that trilogy directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Easwood in 1964, the famous Man with No Name from the Italian films of the spaghetti western genre, a man who knows how to move, who has high-level tactile training, knowledge of firearms and personal defense with the bonus that now, retired, he lives in the countryside raising bees and selling his honey, which means that he is not an ordinary beekeeper.
As a starting point for this whole mess of action, we meet his neighbor and friend, an older woman named Eloise Parker (Phylicia Rashad) who lives on the farm near his and rents him space in her barn to work on the process of Honey, the friendship between the two has its reservations. Eloise is the only person who cares for him and with whom he can talk, the typical man who helps those in need regardless of the cause and consequences.
Eloise, ignorant of the risks involved in using the Internet to carry out banking procedures, makes the terrible mistake of responding to a phishing scam, a technique that consists of sending emails that impersonate companies or public organizations requesting personal and banking information from the user. , within minutes her bank account is empty, and the account of a non-profit organization she helped found, leading her to commit an act of suicide. Clay immediately trades in his beekeeper’s clothes for a commando team to deal with and stop this criminal organization from doing what the law does not or cannot do because it is at the center of corruption.
Up to this point, things are presented in a linear way in which none of the characters are completely established. We have the action hero, the villains of the evil corporation, the victim, and the FBI agent who investigates the event and who turns out to be the daughter of Eloise Verona Parker (Emmy Raver-Lampman) what we would expect from this is that everyone would develop alongside the main story, that each revelation, although not an impressive twist, could give us give as viewers a more general idea of things but that does not happen and it does not happen for the simple reason that they intend for this to be a saga that has more installments, something that does not seem to go out of fashion in Hollywood.
Continuing with the plot, when Agent Parker learns of her mother’s death, she immediately takes the case and arrests Clay on suspicion of homicide. When it is determined that Eloise’s death was a suicide, he is released. The agent reveals that this group who robbed Eloise has been in the FBI’s sights for some time but they are tough to track down, their attitude ranges from neutral to pessimistic about whether they will be found and prosecuted, wanting to achieve justice for Eloise Clay contacts his former fellow Beekeepers to find to the scammers responsible.
At this point the film itself tells us where things are going, this narrative arc has been constant in presenting small acts that open new subplots, this is because we want to tell things differently, from here we already know that Clay will have allies in his search, he will find them and there will be a display of action where the good guys face the bad guys and end up coming out ahead in a situation that has us very worried and in the process, we will see chases, fights, explosions, more fights, more chases and more explosions that comply with the rule that it establishes.
It seems that it is a great merit that the film never gives more details about how these characters arise, how these criminal organizations are born and operate, nor does it establish who Adam Clay was before becoming a commando of this secret elite, as it is that without having An identity exists outside of any known government structure, it is only established that he is an agent that operates under the terms and conditions of the group that trained him, of which we also know nothing or what they have done.
Director David Ayer is no stranger to the action genre, one of his most popular failures is Suicide Squad (2016) or for being the one which opened the film saga of The Fast and the Furious (2001), and here he wants to show us that it seems easy to make tapes with this theme and it’s not just about giving stupid shit but it has a current story with a social message in which we should all take care of each other about fraud and the value of friendship while the topic of bees and the ecological discourse of what they represent is completely diluted, it is just a mere pretext to give a twist to the identity of the protagonist.
The script written by Kurt Wimmer (The Thomas Crown Affair, Street Kings, and Point Break) is also no stranger to this genre, his script lacks strength and the necessary impact to place it at a level in which what we see has symmetry, things happen by chance and for its benefit, it establishes as a rule that it does not matter if the characters are established or if their extreme and exaggerated action justifies the 105 min duration, there are no relevant dialogues that give more seriousness and credibility, it is only focused in tin action which justice for all these victims of cyber fraud is more important than following the law, in the special effects that range from the excessive use of CGI to more practical effects.
Towards its conclusion we see that each character already acts on their own and it seems that we are watching segments of different films, the editing is very uneven which causes it to have more errors than those mentioned above, the holes in the script and here time is wasted that is good They could have used to give a more general idea of things with those useful flashbacks, the FBI agents investigate something, Clay kills everyone without rhyme or reason, the villains try to reestablish their order and a line of defense, all this with the end is that if this works there may be more sagas using mainly the character of Adam Clay in other missions and if not it doesn’t matter because it was an entertaining and forgettable movie.
Something else that its script has is that it is indiscreet in itself, the references to other films of the genre are evident as well as the recreation of scenes that remind us of the Mission: Impossible saga, The Fast and the Furious, and those classic films martial arts B series starring Bruce Lee, the film plays between action and fantasy combined with science fiction that addresses a current issue with a social message, the mixture of these elements is what makes it very unbelievable but it doesn’t matter either, the genre itself is not to be taken seriously, it is only to entertain.
None of us is indeed exempt from being a victim of such a fraud, the message it tries to give us lacks seriousness and falls more into the joke or joke that a country woman cannot or should not be more than 2 million dollars in an account without any type of protection, once the decision is made that the character commits suicide, they do not give any explanation or indication of whether or not they recovered that money, it is understood that if in a game in which so much The director and the scriptwriter leave it to the discretion of the viewer.
Having already stated its flaws, we can say that not everything here is so bad, there are very well-choreographed fight sequences as well as the chase scenes, Ayer has a unique handling of the shots and what he wants us to see in them, and the constant cuts It does not allow us to fully appreciate all that work and leads us to ask ourselves, what did he say when I said what did he say? Even in these times we think and have the foolish belief that this helps more to make the action look spectacular and that is not the case, it simply confuses us and takes us out of rhythm.
All this waste of entertaining errors works in its context, a fantasy about how satisfying it would be to brutalize and kill this type of criminals who take advantage of innocent people without fear of being punished, a topic that is current but has been treated in different ways for decades, we already know that governments know about this and do nothing, as do police departments specialized in cybercrimes, which are protected by an endless network of corruption that goes from the streets to the upper social spheres and policies.
The Beekeeper as a commercial product is completely ridiculous and excessive in almost every way, and perhaps this is why it fulfills what it promises, it is pretentious and boasts of being something new that they believe will make us think that we want to see more of this, there will be Those who do and there will be those who don’t, the proposal loses everything interesting that it could have been and perhaps in other hands this would have a different result for better or worse, as spectators what we want is to have a pleasant time that distracts us from the daily routine of our day. every day and we are not as demanding in this genre as in others.
The cast is made up of Jason Statham, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Josh Hutcherson, Bobby Naderi, Minnie Driver, Phylicia Rashad, Jeremy Irons, and again we say that they do what they can with what they have, some more, others less but the last name Statham sells and makes numbers at the box office, here you don’t need more than what they can give.
The music composed by Dave Sardy and Jared Michael Fry is just what is expected from a production like this, it complies with the rule of being an audiovisual companion with no other pretension than being a good job.
In conclusion, The Beekeeper is astonishingly bad and perhaps that makes it entertainingly good, once again we see what could have been and was not, one more missed opportunity, something that aims to open a new saga in the genre that occupies it without any brilliance. and substance, something that may or may not delight fans but is there trying to occupy a place among the best action films.
The Beekeeper is now available in movie theaters in our country.
