Keeper

The Beekeeper (2024) is part movie, part fever dream, part event. We watched largely to better enjoy the How Did This Get Made podcast. But also because an unhinged Jason Statham is just fun.

It starts in bucolic western Mass. Statham is a humble beekeeper, with a warm relationship with his older African-American landlady, Phylicia Rashad. But Rashad gets phished by a ring of hackers, who wipe out her savings and the money she controlled for a charity. When Statham drops by for dinner, he finds her dead, having shot herself. 

He also encounters her semi-estranged daughter, Emmy Raver-Lampman, an FBI agent. She arrests him, but he is soon freed - to go after the people who conned and killed his friend. He gets in touch with the Beekeepers a shadowy intelligence operation, who give him the address of an office building. This is no boiler-room operation - it is lit with neon like a night club. He gives everyone a chance to leave, then blows up the building.

This brings in the obnoxious kid who runs these conmen, Josh Hutcherson, who calls in his head of security, ex-CIA director Jeremy Irons. Irons realizes that Statham is a retired Beekeeper (in the assassin/spy sense) and that they are potentially screwed. He gets his contacts to send the current Beekeeper after him. 

This is Megan Lee, an ultra-violent nutcase, leading to a fun gas station fight. When she is defeated (blown up), the Beekeepers declare neutrality. 

I'll skip a bunch of fights, and get right to the meat. Hutcherson's mom is Jemma Redgrave, the president of the United States. Her campaign was funded by the phishing profits, laundered as "digital security". So that's who Statham will be up against.

I skipped over most of the action scenes, but I hardly have to tell you: They are wildly violent. Statham doesn't seem to mind killing whole bunches of FBI, police, and secret service. He saws off finger, blows up buildings, drives people off buildings, with a minimum of dialog or facial expression. He is tracked by the FBI, whose dumpy office (with the leaky ceiling in the background) is a great contrast to the phishers 1980s-style neon and mirrors offices. 

Director David Ayer is mainly known for Suicide Squad, the first one. So it makes sense that this would be violent and somewhat incoherent. Who are the Beekeepers? How many are active at a time? Do they all take up literal beekeeping when they retire? Why didn't Statham ever use bees as a weapon? Like, throwing a hive of bees at someone, or trapping them next to an angry hive? We'll probably never know or care. Unless there's a sequel...