hunter albert

We can often criticize Hollywood for often failing to come with any new ideas and instead focusing on well established IP. Action movies, fair or not, are often on the brunt end of mindless entertainment and I’m not one to argue that they don’t have their place. Yet there is often little innovation in the genre. I certainly can’t fault David Ayer for at least attempting to direct an action movie with an interesting premise and style. The Beekeeper unfortunately, still reduces itself to common action movie tropes, a white savior point of view, stiff acting, and some incredibly corny dialogue.

The Beekeeper doesn’t need to be thinking man’s movie, but what annoys the hell out of me is that it’s a half-assed attempt to have a deeper meaning behind its relentless action. There’s a social element in which Ayer pits Statham’s old-fashioned, off the grid, baby boomer identity against the hacking groups technologically dependent young people, with their purple hair and flamboyant clothing—an often unflattering portrayal of Gen Z. These young guns are the ones stealing money from you and they are the threat to society. All of that hard earned cash you earned for youself? That’s for the young people to steal. All of these views are present, but it feels like it really lacks making any sort of point. It’s not that the viewpoint is wrong or not worth debating, it’s that it’s sloppily thrown together without much effort. It’s the equivalent of your drunk family relative lambasting the work effort of the youth because he watched a YouTube video.

But you know who is going to save the day? Jason Stratham. And no amount of minority figures with their own agency are going to be able to do anything about it. It’s another classic tale of Hollywood that the down on their luck minority can’t actually accomplish anything of their own. They’re constantly one step behind Statham, who is always a little smarter, a little tougher, and a little quicker than you.

Maybe The Beekeeper doesn’t need to be anything more than it simply is and I figure most audiences aren’t going to mind. The action is great, it’s got a story hook that’s easy to buy into, and the endless bee puns and facts, while corny, did make a large portion of my theater laugh.

I would have zero reservations suggesting it to anyone who wants to kick back on a Friday night and watch something mindless. I believe those movies have value. There is franchise potential here, but I’ll be damned if my opening statement doesn’t criticize exactly what it could turn into: an endless franchise that’s run into the ground.

As the movie explains, there is a type of bee called a Queen Killer. This bee, for the good of the hive, will stop at nothing to kill the queen of the colony to ensure its long term survival. For The Beekeeper in terms of action movies, it’s not killing the queen to ensure innovation, but rather keeping the status quo, ugly Hollywood warts and all.

★★