The Beekeeper (2024)

The Beekeeper arrives as a reminder that the revenge thriller remains a sturdy, unpretentious machine, and that Jason Statham can still operate one with the grim efficiency of a man who has read the manual many times. David Ayer directs with a straight face. A retired operative tends his hives, a kindly landlady loses her savings to a phishing operation, and the ensuing carnage is delivered with the solemnity of a biblical plague. The film is a 2024 release, which means we are obliged to inspect it for the era's markers. Most of them are simply not there.

The supporting cast is more diverse than the genre demands. Emmy Raver-Lampman plays a Black female FBI agent, Phylicia Rashad plays the doomed landlady, Bobby Naderi plays the partner. None of these roles are accompanied by commentary or argument. They exist, they act, the plot proceeds. There is no LGBTQ content, no reckoning with race, no engagement with climate, body image, or neurodivergence. A woman sits in the Oval Office and a woman carries a badge, yet the film frames neither as a statement. It is content to let them do their jobs.

Where the film does carry a charge is in its choice of villain. The antagonist is a tech-bro chief executive running a global fraud empire, shielded by a former CIA director and by his own mother, the President, whose election he rigged. The wealthy feed on the vulnerable, and the institutions meant to restrain them are complicit. This is a recognizable strain of populist resentment, and the film leans into it. It never stops to explain itself, though. The argument arrives through a bandsaw, not a monologue. A mild hum of "the system is rigged" runs beneath the mayhem, and that is as close as the film comes to preaching. It is a lean, mean, faintly indignant piece of work, and it knows exactly what it is.