If we’re being honest with ourselves, nothing much has really changed with Jason Statham’s career over the last 20 years. He’s the guy who audiences pay money to see punch and kick people for two hours while Jason doesn’t have any new tricks up his bag, his work has remained consistent over the last several years.

Statham whether you like him or not in one of the few action stars we have left in Hollywood. Jason has had a stretch of movies such as ‘Wrath and Man’ and ‘Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre’ as long as he is staying clear of franchises. Statham is still punching people in the face, people are still willing to watch. This time around he rejoins Kurt Wimmer and David Eyre for an MGM Amazon production called The Beekeeper.

In this film, Jason Statham plays Adam Clay, a former operative of a secret organization referred to as the beekeeper after a friend of his commits suicide after falling for a massive phishing scam. Clay sets out to get revenge on the company response but even after burning the said company to the ground, he’s not satisfied there, Clay is determined to make sure that the people involved in this scam will never scam anyone else ever again.

And the only way to make sure that doesn’t happen is to get the man financing the operation from the top Hunger Games star Josh Hutcherson plays Derek Danforth the man in charge of this entire scam and the man who becomes the target of Adam Clay’s wrath.

And as long as Jason Statham is on his A game, the film has a very hard time disappointing its audience.The plot certainly isn’t anything new that we haven’t seen before. The set up here is that Jason Statham’s character plays an operative from a secret government organization who is used to take care of the tough problems that the government doesn’t want on their books.

The Beekeeper is a film that cuts all the fat out and goes straight into the meat of the story. It established the relationship that Adam Clay has with an elderly woman played by Felicia Rashad. The film does an outstanding job of giving you a reason to legitimately hate the villains.

The villains are a bunch of rich scammers who go after the weakest and the poorest and the oldest among us all in an act just to enrich themselves in the process because the bad guys are so villainous. Every punch that Jason Statham delivers in the film has a satisfying, almost therapeutic reaction to this audience.

The biggest knock on this film, however, is the supporting cast, Josh Hutcherson is the villain of the film and he plays a weird mix between Logan Paul and Hunter Biden, completely unlikable and just completely grimy as a character. However, other stars don’t really live up to their expectation.

Jeremy Irons is in the film as almost the former CIA father figure to Josh’s character. Outside of a couple of scenes, he really doesn’t have much of a presence in the movie. The film feels like he was meant for a bigger role but just never came through.

Emmy Lampman plays an FBI agent in the film. However, you never truly buy her as the role she’s supposed to be playing and in some scenes, it feels like the film is coming to a screeching halt every time she appeared.

Then you had Jemma Redgrave playing the President of the United States despite clearly having a British accent in the film, Minnie Driver is in the film for a couple of shots that she probably filmed on her lunch break.

This film lives and dies with Jason Statham and fortunately, he’s a good enough of a leading man to mask a lot of the flaws in the story. This is certainly not a bad film. Most audiences are only going to be looking for an over the top action film that they can enjoy and there’s certainly enough good in this movie to be enjoyable when it’s all said and done.

The Beekeeper is a fun movie and a great way to start off 2024.

3.5/5

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