THE BEEKEEPER (2024) – Another John Wick inspired copycat

Jason Statham is Adam Clay, a retired member of a covert government spy agency called The Beekeepers, made up of seemingly highly trained killers. Adam is forced into coming out of his retirement to take revenge over the death of a close friend who fell victim to computer scammers. There is very little originality to the whole premise. We have seen this all before in countless Hollywood action movies and will no doubt continue to see these being churned out at the rate of a dime a dozen. The plot is paper thin and only serves to provide the opportunity for Statham to display his usual brand of fist fights action and gun power.

Jason Statham fits in his role comfortably here and looks every bit the part of a macho action hero that we can all root for. We shamelessly cheer him on as he takes on an endless assembly of faceless baddies whom he gets to butcher in various colourful manners. He is the film’s greatest asset while we. the viewers happily lap up all the nonsensical action scenes when though they all seem familiar and predictable in their outcome. The film makers here also managed to get a decent cast which include some respectable names with the likes of Jeremy Irons, Minnie Driver and Josh Hutcherson. They were mostly wasted as their characters were all very poorly written and came across very one dimensional. Most of the acting from the supporting cast was also bad.

While I have to admit that I enjoyed seeing Jason flex his muscles and do away with the bad guys, I had issues with the film’s storyline. Ever since Keanu Reeves had his success with the John Wick series, we have seen many copycats in the market. The Beekeeper has lots of elements of John Wick movies particularly in the circumstances and situation that Jason’s characters finds himself in. It does lose out to John Wick in terms of the level of details in the action choreography, quality of acting and overall production values. Another thing I think many of the viewers would notice is that even though the title of the film is The Beekeeper and that bees are constantly being mentioned in the script, they hardly actually appeared on screen. Don’t hold your breath for the typical scenes depicting hordes of bees attacking their victims.

The Beekeeper is good for a bit of mindless action mixed with some lighthearted dark humour. It seems content to offer nothing exceptional or new to the genre.