The Beekeeper (2024) We'll not deny it. We had the best guilty pleasure time of our lives watching this.
And there may be no guiltier pleasure this year than this one.
Stupid in the extreme? Yes.
Ridiculous? Unbelievable? Borderline unintentionally hilarious? Yes.
We don't care. We're tellin' you right now, cook up a vast amount of popcorn, stock your favorite alcoholic beverage, plop down on the couch and give in to the lunacy.
It's 105 minutes of pure unadulterated Jason Statham ass-kicking, uninterrupted by logic, reality, or even a smidgen of common sense.
Just go with it. But we'd first recommend watching it as if you recently had a prefrontal lobotomy. Leave your brains on pause for the duration of the film's running time.......(much like Trumpanzees for duration of the election...)
A movie like this was inevitable. Sooner or later a filmmaker would wake up in the middle of the night and scream, "Let's make 'The Equalizer' on steroids! Let's make Denzel's character look like Mr. Rogers!"
And so we come across Statham's 'Adam Clay', a quiet, monosyllabic beekeeper, tending to his little insect charges and enjoying the friendship and care given him by his elderly retired neighbor Eloise (Phylicia Rashad).
Then Eloise, gentle and kind-hearted, responds to one of those fake 'virus' warnings on her laptop. And a corporate funded array of cyberthieves clean out her life savings and her charity fund, prompting her immediate suicide.
This turn of events rather upsets the beekeeper. And you don't want to make this guy upset. Because he used to be a member of a super-secret, deep state cadre of assassin-avengers, pledged to maintain a semblance of order in the world. This gang makes Seal Team 6 look like pre-schoolers.
Guess what? They're actually called 'The Beekeepers', dedicated to a metaphorical view of the world as a hive. They see their task as protectors of the hive, even if that means killing the Queen and her consorts.....
Okay, stop snickering. We're not making this up. Really.
And that's all besides the point anyway.
The main attraction here is watching Jason Statham as an unstoppable vengeance machine on the hunt for all the entitled corporate scum who drove his friend into taking her own life.
Capable of punching, kicking, stabbing and shooting mass quantities of assailants who foolishly get in his way, the Beekeeper tears through the corridors of power like a one man tornado.
Most amusingly, Statham's rampages hardly phase the young, loathsome primary villain Derek Danforth (Josh Hutcherson). He's a rich, spoiled rotten corporate creep, currently under the protection of ex-CIA director and family friend Wallace Westwyld (Jeremy Irons). And the weary, disgusted Westwyld's only babysitting the odious little prick at the request of Derek's mother (Jemma Redgrave) the current U.S. President.......(feel free to mutter, "She's the WHAT?")
.....which would make the POTUS unofficially the Queen if we're going by the rules of regulations of the The Beekeepers mythology. Uh oh.....
But none of that stuff matters. You watch a movie like this for the pure, down 'n dirty fun of seeing sights like Statham face punching cyber-scammers senseless, penetrating every heavily armed fortress designed to stop him and burning down and/or blowing up entire office buildings.
And those buildings get blowed up real good. Oh yes.
We wouldn't even begin to apply a standard critical evaluation to "The Beekeeper". The movie's completely unapologetic about itself and and that's what we loved about it. We cheered, we laughed and delighted in Jason Statham decimating dozens of people as if it's just another day at the office for him.
But as a guilty pleasure?
4 ****in' stars. (****).
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