‘The Beekeeper’ Review: David Ayer’s Latest is Not Buzz-Worthy

The roller coaster career of David Ayer, from hot screenwriter to exciting stylist to perceived Hollywood hack after his latest trifecta of Suicide Squad, Bright, and The Tax Collector, has found its way into Dumpuary. The director’s latest film, The Beekeeper, is the first major action film of 2024. In general, this kind of movie with this kind of release date is a warning sign. Lo and behold, The Beekeeper finds Ayer trapped in a middle ground, creating a film begging for out-and-out schlock, but he can’t help trying to mix discordant world-building and half-baked social commentary into the work. The Beekeeper is a work of cinematic whiplash that neither carries enough visceral momentum to be a traditionally satisfying action film nor keeps enough on its mind to form a cohesive worldview, leaving the viewer with a misshapen mass of a film. The term “style over substance” comes to mind, but the style is frustratingly self-destructive, a cinematic snake eating its own tail.

The Beekeeper is the story of “Mr. Clay” (Jason Statham), a former member of a secret society of assassins known as “The Beekeepers” who now spends his retirement, you guessed it, tending to bees at a secluded house out in the country. However, if movies have taught us anything, it’s that no hitman truly stays retired. When a predatory phishing organization indirectly leads to a tragedy that shakes up his life of solitude, Mr. Clay decides to fight phishing with fishing… with dynamite. 

The rest of the film mostly consists of effectively staged, if unoriginal, acts of hyperviolence carried out by Statham balanced out by the frightened reactions and countermeasure planning by the ultimate target of Mr. Clay’s revenge campaign, the Bitcoin-loving, pseudo-spiritual young head of the conglomerate from which the phishing calls stemmed. This blonde-tipped failson, Derek Danforth, is played by Josh Hutcherson in a role that is totally against type. If Hutcherson has a strength as a performer, it’s his vulnerability. So his try-hard performance actually plays in this film, as Derek absolutely cannot pull off his boy genius, tough guy persona. Hutcherson’s casting is clever, even if his character is very much drafting off the blueprint of John Wick, but what action franchise isn’t these days?

The Beekeeper becomes a bit of a lather, rinse, repeat exercise after a while, with the creative flourishes actually working against the film. In an effort to disrupt the tedium, Ayer & Co. will throw in scenes that try to build out the mythos of The Beekeepers, but these hyper-stylized scenes feel ripped from too-dumb-to-succeed films like Smokin’ Aces and Bullet Train, their inclusion blurring the driving force of the film. It is a shame, really, seeing a filmmaker capable of dazzling action sequences like those in Fury, flawed as the greater film may be, or taut dialogue like that in Training Day descend to the bottom of the barrel. 

One man who has a timeshare at the bottom of the barrel, though, is Jason Statham. The Beekeeper tries to capture the two successful extremes of Statham’s career: his knack for playing characters with a blindsight on vengeance (look at Wrath of Man for the best example of this) and leaning into comedic absurdism in the Crank films – again, the John Wick blueprint. The problem is, Ayer and Statham cannot bridge the gap between these tonal poles. With each passing rip-off, the genius of Wick only becomes more apparent. Statham (a talented physical performer with an underrated sense of comedic timing but a limited dramatic range that has only occasionally borne fruit) doesn’t have the actorly dexterity to achieve the balance this film craves.

The film is not devoid of pleasures, though, especially if you have a nostalgia for the simple joys of pulpy action flicks from the ‘80s and ‘90s. Your patience for bee puns may vary, but the moments of throwback quippery provide serotonin hits that sustain stretches of the film. Statham’s physicality sells the violence, and some kills go so far that they transcend disturbance and become pretty hilarious. I found myself smacking my armrest in delight a couple of times. 

Through sheer power of pulp and a dull side plot involving an FBI acquaintance of Mr. Clay with connections to the film’s inciting incident, the script manages to forcefully make the stakes of the film a matter of national security and potential geopolitical disgrace. The big reveal is an eye-roller, trying to build tension out of left field. With absolutely no countdown to liftoff, there is no reason to care. It all leads to a fizzle as the credits roll and even worse, it’s a fizzle that teases a sequel. Rest assured, I find it highly unlikely we will see a follow-up, presumably titled The Beekeeperzzz, released in a couple of years.

Ayer’s macho, artless filmmaking feels outdated (even Michael Bay has started experimenting with the form a little bit), even if it is meant to be a pastiche of eras past. The question needs to be asked: Is this movie in on the joke enough? The Beekeeper isn’t particularly funny, it isn’t particularly biting in its depiction of tech-sploitation, and it lacks any sort of emotional punch, so what good is it? The film can’t stand up to recent man-on-a-mission thrillers like Extraction 2 or Sisu, let alone the Wick films. Stuck in a purgatorial genre, The Beekeeper just lies in front of you, begging for a push in one direction or the other; its attempts at establishing multiple identities end up making it devoid of one entirely.

Grade: C-

Amazon MGM will release The Beekeeper only in theaters on January 12.