“The Beekeeper” is an oddly uneven action thriller flick. While its action scenes are uttermost serious and intense just like its tough guy hero with a particular set of skills, it is also often so ridiculous in case of story and characters that you may be sometimes rather amused by how it manages to keep its attitude straight even during its most cartoonish parts.

Because its tough guy hero, Adam Clay, is played by Jason Statham, I will definitely not need to describe you that much on his character except that this dude has worked as a beekeeper after retiring from whatever he did in the past. He resides in a barn next to a country house belonging to some nice old black lady, and we observe how much he is dedicated to those beehives of his outside the house – and his dear landlady who has always shown him genuine kindness and generosity.

However, something bad occurs not long after the opening part where his sweet relationship with his landlady is succinctly summarized to us. She receives an unexpected phone call, but, unfortunately, it turns out to be from some vicious local phishing scam operation, and, sadly, she soon finds herself becoming totally penniless once she unwisely lets herself deceived and then manipulated by those scumbags on the other end of the line. So devastated by this immense financial loss (She happens to have a considerable amount of capital for not only her pension but also some non-profit organization, by the way), she eventually commits suicide, and that is belatedly discovered by Clay and then her FBI agent daughter.

While he was initially arrested on the spot by the landlady’s daughter, Clay is eventually released, and then, once he comes to learn of what drove his dear landlady to suicide, he soon embarks on his personal quest for the revenge for her. First, he locates where those aforementioned scumbags are running their seemingly legitimate company, and then he surely unleashes his unforgiving wrath upon them and their workplace.

It subsequently turns out that this criminal company in question is just the tip of a much bigger criminal business, which is owned by some spoiled tech company CEO whose mother is incidentally one of the most powerful political figures in US. Thanks to his mother’s considerable political connections, this despicable lad has a former CIA director as someone to clean and cover up whatever mess he recently causes, and he surely expects everything to be taken care of within a short time. However, he is only informed that he and his criminal associates happen to mess with someone as unstoppable as, say, John Wick, and, as one supporting character says in “Citizen Kane” (1941), he is going to need more than one lesson – and he is surely going to get more than one lesson.

As this spoiled brat clumsily and pathetically tries to get things under control, lots of agents and henchmen go for stopping Clay, and we are accordingly served with lots of brutal physical action scenes where a heap of persons are killed or maimed by this very dangerous guy. While you may wince at how brutally remorseless and ruthless he really is, you may cheer for him to some degree when he doles out his cold-blooded punishment to those deplorable criminals, who are more or less than unpleasant caricatures deserving to be punished sooner or later.

The story becomes all the more outrageous as Clay approaches closer to his final target, but the attitude of the movie and its hero is solemn as ever, and the movie does not seem to decide on which option it should commit itself to. While it does not want to be totally outrageous like those gleefully preposterous action flicks such as “Shoot ‘Em Up” (2007), it also hesitates to be utterly serious to the end like “Wrath of Man” (2021), and its tonal problem is more evident during the climactic part where its hero goes all the way for his final payback moment (Is this a spoiler?).

Anyway, Statham, who produced the film along with director David Ayer, shows again his considerable but rather underestimated longevity as a reliable action movie star. While his acting range may be not that wide, Statham has been a fairly charismatic movie star for more than 20 years as going through many different action flicks ranging from “The Transporter” (2002) to several recent Fast and Furious sequels, and I can easily imagine him working as usual even after 10 years. After all, Charles Bronson and Liam Neeson could pull that off, so why not him?

One of the main weak points of the film is how most of its supporting characters remain underwritten on the whole. Emmy Raver-Lampman tries to bring some emotional complexity to her FBI agent character, but she is mostly limited by her bland thankless role, and so are Minnie Driver and Jeremy Irons, who just simply appear on the screen without doing anything particular to remember. As the main villain of the story, Josh Hutcherson did a hammy acting with capital “H”, and he somehow makes it into a guilty pleasure instead of being merely distracting.

Overall, “The Beekeeper” is a passable action flick which only reminds us again of Statham’s formidable presence as an action movie hero. Yes, I have often not regarded him that seriously, but I admire to some degree how he has kept going during last two decades, so I recommend you to check it out “Wrath of Man” instead, where he was more effective and interesting in my inconsequential opinion. He may not be a very good actor, but he has steadily maintained his star quality and presence at least, and that has been quite entertaining for us to watch, you know.