THE BEEKEEPER

Name: THE BEEKEEPER
Item: THE BEEKEEPER
Author: Lillie Jaenchen

"Rampage for Justice"

Content: -3 Excessive sex, violence, immorality, and/or worldview problems. (Sometimes excessive content such as violence is in otherwise redemptive movies.)

Entertainment Quality:

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Violence
Sex
Nudity

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What You Need To Know:

THE BEEKEEPER is an explosive thriller starring Jason Statham. Statham plays Adam Clay, a retired government assassin who lives on the rural land of an elderly woman who runs a $2 million charity for senior citizens. Sadly, the woman commits suicide when a criminal telemarketing outfit steals the $2 million and the woman’s own money. The criminal enterprise is run by the son of a powerful female politician, who works for a legitimate company run by her second husband. Meanwhile, the elderly woman’s daughter is an FBI agent ordered to stop the telemarketing fraudsters and stop Adam.

THE BEEKEEPER has better developed characters than Statham’s recent outings. It also sets up a suspenseful story with the titular hero going after some pretty despicable foes. The female FBI agent and her partner are appealing characters. THE BEEKEEPER has a strong moral worldview. It promotes seeking justice against ruthless criminals who defraud senior citizens. However, the movie is marred by more than 130 obscenities and some extreme violence. Also, the hero in THE BEEKEEPER escapes punishment for harming some FBI and Secret Service agents.

Content:

(BB, PP, FR, LLL, VVV, S, AA, DD, M):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Strong moral worldview promotes justice against ruthless criminals who defraud senior citizens of their life savings, mostly through fake computer schemes, and FBI agents and Secret Service agents are seen as positive figures, although they try to stop the title character from seeking violent justice from the criminals (the title character is a retired government assassin who was part of a top, top secret agency virtually given carte blanche to stop any internal or external threat to the United States), but the movie has some antinomian or lawless values since the title character escapes punishment for harming FBI and Secret Service agents, a few of which he seems to kill (though he saves one government official from being murdered);

Foul Language:

At least 134 obscenities (including many “f” words), one strong profanity using the name of Jesus Christ, one strong profanity using the word God and the “d” word, and one light exclamatory profanity (OMG);

Violence:

Lots of strong and some extreme action violence includes many point blank shootings with some blood, gunfights, many martial arts and boxing fights (karate and Brazilian martial arts), man uses thin electric saw to cut off some of one villain’s fingers (later the corpse of the man is shown having two missing fingers, intense hand-to-hand fights as title character wades through antagonists, man bombs telemarketing offices in middle of large building that were used to fleece senior citizens of their life savings, man causes Secret Service vehicles to explode as a diversion, hero punches staples into man’s head and hands to get information from him, antagonists sometimes fall from heights to great injury or their deaths, a character tries to kill a person close to them but is shot dead instead, and title character harms FBI and Secret Service agents trying to stop his rampage of vigilante justice (a few of them seem to be killed, especially one who’s thrown from a great height);

Sex:

No depicted or implied sex (younger villain is shown with two or three women at a spa of some kind), but there are two or so brief verbal sexual references;

Nudity:

No nudity;

Alcohol Use:

Some alcohol use and woman is shown drunk after her mother is driven to suicide by evil criminal fraudsters;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

Brief smoking and younger villain snorts cocaine in one of his mother’s mansions; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

The son of a high level elected government official is a rich criminal who defrauds senior citizens of their life savings and property and orders people to murder the hero, but he doesn’t escape justice himself (he also uses his ill-gotten gains to support the political campaign of a close relative).

More Detail:

THE BEEKEEPER is an explosive thriller about the American government’s best and most secret, but retired, assassin going on a rampage against a criminal organization which is run by a high government official’s son and which took the life savings of an elderly woman who befriended the retired assassin and ran a $2 million charity for senior citizens. THE BEEKEEPER has lots of edge-of-your-seat action and well-developed characters, but the avenging hero escapes punishment for harming some FBI and Secret Service agents and the movie’s positive notions of justice are marred by abundant foul language and some extreme violence.

The movie begins with the assassin, Adam Clay, attending to the beehives he runs on the rural land of an elderly woman, Eloise. Eloise talks to Adam and thanks him for revitalizing her land with the bees and their pollinating activity. Adam returns the compliment by telling her she’s the only person who ever treated him kindly. Eloise invites him for dinner later.

Adam returns to tending his bees. Meanwhile, inside her house, Eloise gets a sudden alert on her computer telling her the computer has been infected with viruses. Mistakenly, she calls the number on the alert, and it turns out to be a telemarketing scammer supported by a bunch of phony telemarketers. The man on the line keeps Eloise on the line and doing everything he tells her while his team steals all of the money in her accounts, including the $2 million charity accounts she runs for needy senior citizens.

Adam returns later to have dinner with Eloise, only to find she’s committed suicide with a gun. At first, the police don’t believe his story, including Eloise’s daughter, Verona, who happens to be an FBI agent. However, with no gunpowder residue on his hands, they let him go.

It turns out Adam is a retired government agent and assassin. He belonged to a highly secret agency called The Beekeepers, an agency that monitored all internal government threats to the country and the worst external threats. In fact, Adam was the top Beekeeper, and he took his duty to “protect the hive” extremely seriously.

Adam is outraged by the fraudsters who bilked Eloise of her money and the money in the charity. With help from a technical contact at his old agency, he tracks down the telemarketing office that called Eloise. He threatens the man who talked to Eloise and the people who work for him and beats up the security guards. Scared, they all leave. After pouring gasoline all over their office, Adam goes outside the building and ignites the spark that blows up the office, and much of the building.

Adam goes on a rampage against the company behind the telemarketing fraud, which has multiple telemarketing offices around the county like the one Adam blew up. The company and the fraudsters turn out to be linked to a large legitimate company run by the second husband (or so it seems) of a powerful female politician. The man used to run the CIA. However, it’s the man’s stepson, the woman’s son from another marriage, who’s behind the fraud.

The son sends assassins after Adam while Adam continues his vigilante rampage. Meanwhile, the FBI’s Deputy Director orders Eloise’s daughter, Verona, to stop the fraud and stop Adam.

How far will Adam go? When push comes to shove, will Verona have to kill Adam?

THE BEEKEEPER stars Jason Statham as the retired government assassin. The movie has better developed characters than some of Statham’s recent outings. It also sets up a suspenseful story with the titular hero going after some pretty despicable foes, and the female FBI agent caught in the middle.

THE BEEKEEPER has a strong moral worldview. It promotes seeking justice against ruthless, despicable criminals who defraud senior citizens of their life savings. However, the movie is marred by more than 130 obscenities and some extreme violence. Also, the hero ends up harming some FBI and Secret Service agents. A few of them seem to be killed. For instance, he throws at least one agent off a high stairwell in an office building. The Beekeeper escapes punishment for doing this, even though he saves one important governmental official from being murdered.

MOVIEGUIDE® rates THE BEEKEPER as excessive and unacceptable, which is a Minus 3.