The Beekeeper opens on a quiet friendship in Springfield, Massachusetts. Eloise Parker, a retired school teacher, lives alone and rents barn space to Adam Clay, a beekeeper who keeps to himself. A phishing scam drains her life savings, including more than $2 million from a charity she runs. Eloise kills herself. Clay finds the body, and the film becomes a revenge story that starts in a barn and moves up the chain of a global scam operation.
David Ayer directed The Beekeeper and Kurt Wimmer wrote it. Jason Statham plays Clay. Phylicia Rashad plays Eloise. The film runs 106 minutes and was released in the United States by Amazon MGM Studios and in the United Kingdom by Sky Cinema on January 12, 2024. It grossed $162.6 million worldwide against a $40 million budget.
- Release date: January 12, 2024
- Runtime: 106 minutes
- Budget: $40 million
- Worldwide gross: $162.6 million
- Audience score: 7.3/10 (TMDB, 4529 votes)
Trailer, via Amazon MGM Studios.
Mickey Garnett’s Call Center Burns
The first act does the work. FBI agent Verona Parker, Eloise’s daughter, arrests Clay on suspicion of murdering her mother. He is cleared and released, and Verona apologizes. Clay then contacts a group called the Beekeepers, the clandestine organization he once served, and asks for names. They trace the scammers to a call center near Springfield run by Mickey Garnett.
Clay storms the call center and burns it down, killing guards. Garnett’s boss, Derek Danforth, tells him to kill Clay. Clay takes down the assailants and severs Garnett’s fingers with a bandsaw. Garnett calls Derek to warn him. Clay kills Garnett and warns Derek that he is next.
This is the part of The Beekeeper that works best. The violence is blunt and fast. Clay does not give speeches. He does not explain himself. The film understands that a man with a bandsaw and a reason is enough.
Derek Danforth’s Tech Firm
Josh Hutcherson plays Derek Danforth, a tech bro and CEO of Danforth Enterprises, who runs an international scamming ring. Jeremy Irons plays Wallace Westwyld, the former CIA director who now heads security for Danforth Enterprises. When Westwyld recognizes Clay as a former Beekeeper, he alerts the CIA.
The CIA sends Anisette, a current Beekeeper, to kill Clay. He kills her and cuts off one of her fingers. The Beekeepers declare neutrality. Westwyld is left with no defenses.
Clay uses Anisette’s severed finger to enter her compound and search for Derek’s primary call center. Verona and her partner, Matt Wiley, anticipate his next target: the Nine Star United Center in Boston, which oversees Derek’s global scam call centers. Westwyld rallies a black ops team led by Pettis. A South African mercenary named Lazarus, experienced in killing Beekeepers, leads the Danforths’ mercenary guards.
The cast is deep. Emmy Raver-Lampman plays Verona. Bobby Naderi plays Wiley. Minnie Driver plays CIA Director Janet Harward. Jemma Redgrave plays President Jessica Danforth, Derek’s mother. Don Gilet plays Deputy Director Jackson Prigg. Michael Epp plays Pettis. Taylor James plays Lazarus.
President Jessica Danforth’s Son
The Beekeeper escalates until the President is involved. That is the film’s biggest swing. Derek is the President’s son. His scam operation reaches across the globe. The CIA, the FBI and a private mercenary army all circle the same target.
The film does not treat this as absurd. It treats it as inevitable. A scam that steals $2 million from a charity is not small. A call center that runs global fraud is not small. The Beekeeper follows the money up the chain until it reaches the President’s family.
Statham is the reason this works. He plays Clay with almost no expression. The tagline says, “Expose the corruption. Protect the hive.” Clay does both. He is not a hero. He is a man finishing a job.
The Beekeepers Declare Neutrality
The Beekeeper is not a complicated film. It does not want to be. The plot moves in a straight line: find the scammers, kill the scammers, find the boss, kill the boss. The pleasure is in the execution.
The film’s best idea is the Beekeepers themselves. A clandestine organization that declares neutrality when one of its own is threatened is a cold, funny detail. It makes Clay an outcast twice over. He is retired from a group that will not protect him. He is hunting a man whose mother runs the country.
The action is clean. The call center sequence, the bandsaw, the severed fingers, the Boston compound — these are staged with a plain, mean efficiency. Ayer does not linger. He does not slow down for sentiment. When Eloise dies, the film gives Clay one moment of grief and then sends him out the door.
Where the Boston Compound Stumbles
The Beekeeper loses some force in its back half. The Nine Star United Center and the black ops team add bodies but not tension. Lazarus is described as experienced in killing Beekeepers, which should make him a real threat, but the film does not build him into one. Pettis and his team are obstacles, not characters.
The political layer is thinner than it looks. President Danforth is Derek’s mother, which raises the stakes, but the film keeps that relationship mostly in the background. It is a fact, not a theme. The Beekeepers remain a mystery. That is fine for a sequel. It is less fine for a film that wants its ending to land.
Verona and Wiley are the closest thing to a moral center. Raver-Lampman plays Verona as a professional who is always a step behind. That works. But the film does not give her enough to do in the final act. She watches. She follows. She arrives.
The Beekeeper is a lean, mean action film with a clear engine and a star who knows exactly what he is doing. It runs 106 minutes and does not waste them. The revenge is simple. The violence is direct. The world is corrupt from the call center to the President’s family.
It is not a great film. The villains are thin. The political stakes are underused. The Beekeepers are more interesting as a mystery than as a resolution. But The Beekeeper knows what it is. It is a Jason Statham film about a man who keeps bees and kills people who steal from old women. That is enough.
The published audience score is 7.3/10. That feels right. The Beekeeper is better than it needs to be and less than it could be. It delivers the thing it promises. It does not pretend to be more.
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