Statham vs. the world
In a Statham Movie, we want of the silent person who pulls his face and delivers justice with the force of his fists. Good news: this is the program The Beekeeper. In the (de)composition role of Jason Statham, Adam Clay delivers exactly the expected performance – or could it be the other way around? Convinced of being above the law, he fully intends to go on a rampage.
Since the only person in the film who didn’t oppose him in any way dies after ten minutes, our early retiree leaves on a crusade against the whole world, margoulins and FBI agents alike. Entrust it with protecting the bees: in 24 hours flat, all its predators (including humans) will have bitten the dust.
Certainly, The Beekeeper never transcends its premise. But as long as we know where we are going, the film generally does the job. This simplicity seems to have appealed: at the American box office, it only took one weekend to equal the (deserved) sinking total. The Expendable 4…with Jason Statham.
Art stinger
With this project more suited to him, Ayer stops his free fall (The Tax Collector, Bright). Although they lack a little breadth, there is nothing dishonorable about the castagne scenes : from the barn to theopen spacethey make the effort to use their environment in order to vary the pleasures (the stapler, the wood sawyer, etc.) and dare to do some (a bit) more graphic shots.
Two “end-of-level bosses” with a more elaborate design stand out from the rest, and we regret that they are not exploited more. A deranged punk capable of lead the heavy machine gun assault in the middle of a gas station without worrying about jumping with the bousin deserved more than a few minutes of screen time. This is undoubtedly the main criticism that can be leveled at The Beekeeper : instead of breaking up his action scenes, he should have indulged himself without counting. With more generosity, gore, excess, Jason…we had a real guilty pleasure.
All at Stathapis
Too stupid… or not enough?
Because when it doesn’t hit, the screenplay by Kurt Wimmer (who wrote the one for the last Expendablesbut also made the underside Equilibrium) will only excite fans of the Deep State (or Deep State). Instead of pulling all the absurd sap of this story of a clandestine organizationthe film uses it as a pretext full of shortcuts that Waze developers would envy.
All the scenes where the wrong Jason does not appear seem too much, between the superfluous investigations and Jeremy Irons who hides like a pig. Revenge would be tastier with a minimum of empathy for the victim, but the victim is only entitled to a hasty exchange and a scam that the next campaign against phishing will certainly use as a counterexample. What follows is the same, with its investigator who condenses the stages of mourning into one: the “balek phase”.
The professional. Bees.
Everything is packed in distressing dialogues, concocted by a generative AI whose database would be limited to the intranet of a nursery school. The arguments on the theme “you’re the one who says it, it’s you who’s there” are followed by the accusatory comparisons between hurting an old man or a kid, to the point of sometimes bordering on a stroke of offbeat genius (“I lost my virginity in this barn”).
The film is uninhibited enough to flirt with the borders of parody, without ever quite getting into it. As for action, However, he would have gained everything from pushing the knobs : by abandoning himself to excess, he could have become a little deviant nugget as unforgettable asHypertension. Part postponed with the reconstitution of the Ayer/Statham duo in early 2025 for Levon’s Trade ?
The Beekeepers is available on DVD from April 29, 2024 and on Prime Video from May 17
