Parents' Guide to The Beekeeper

This is yet another violent revenge story, but it's better than average; the filmmakers flesh it out, enriching and humanizing it with interesting supporting characters and motivations. The Beekeeper starts out like a run-of-the-mill Statham movie, establishing Clay's connection to Eloise. But before long comes the harrowing sequence in which we see, detail by detail, just how she succumbs to fraud. And when Verona enters the picture, things get even more interesting. She's something of a mess: She drinks too much, shares teasing banter with her partner, and is torn up about her mother. She knows her job is to stop Clay from his killing spree, but, on the other hand, Clay is exacting revenge for her.

Jeremy Irons adds another great layer as Danforth's security man; he knows he's corrupted his soul by taking a no-good job for a lot of money, but he still follows through. Even the call center bosses, shouting vulgar encouragements to their thieving employees, feel like fully dimensional characters. Ironically, it's Clay who falls on a clunky metaphor. His secret organization is known as the "Beekeepers," but he's also a literal beekeeper and uses beekeeping terminology to justify his vengeance. It doesn't quite work, but Statham is still very good at this kind of thing, and he gives us an unstoppable killing machine who lets us know that, ultimately, he only seems to be unstoppable. The Beekeeper is perhaps not quite up to the level of director David Ayer's End of Watch or Fury, but it's surprisingly sharp and surprisingly fun.