“If a beekeeper says you’re gonna die, you’re gonna die.” Wallace Westwyld (Jeremy Irons)
When patrician bad boy, Oscar-winning Irons, intones this threat/reality, you can figure The Beekeeper, Jason Statham’s newest blood fest, may be a cut above his usual tongue-in-cheek tomfoolery. It is, lusty as his revenge motif is and metaphoric as the title wants to be.
Retired federal operative, read “assassin,” called a “Beekeeper,” Adam Clay (Statham),--hear the metaphor start ringing-- witnesses the exploitation of an elderly friend, Eloise (Phylicia Rashad), by ruthless internet scammers, ending in her suicide. Director David Ayer and writer Kurt Wimmer not quite subtly weave the analogy of Clay ridding the hive (read society) of bad bees, even ones at the very top of the hive’s government.
I know, The beekeeper is just another example of revenge porn, but they have crafted an early try at literacy while keeping us fed on the nectar of ramming order into a chaotic political world such as our current presidential race fosters. While the script may offer too many ham-handed allusions to the figurative underpinnings, I found myself pleased by the attempt and remembering how the Bard eloquently incorporated the motif into one of his bloodiest and most romantic battle plays when he speaks of
“the honeybees, / Creatures that by a rule in nature teach / The act of order to a peopled kingdom.” The Archbishop of Canterbury in Shakespeare’s Henry V.
Statham, 56 and feisty as ever, is as stone faced as ever, but the surprisingly effective setup with the death of his friend at the beginning casts a serious and almost literate overlay to otherwise transparently fabulous death actions that would otherwise be plain silly. Avenging the scammed elderly seems noble given how many of us have seen the sudden blinking warning that our system has been compromised and don’t do anything but “Call this number!” If you’re old and electronic averse, you’re ready to be scammed.
Stepping outside the usually-absurd carnage, The Beekeeper touches on such important societal blights as corrupt political campaign funding and malicious interference of family members with otherwise benign politicians. Although bad boys are as bad, if not worse, than any you have seen in these oft-cliched thrillers, this film tries to be more original, topical, and literate with both the good and the bad.
Not bad for a Statham cliche.
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and hosts Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take out of WCBE 90.5 FM. Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com
