“The Beekeeper.” When first seeing the name of this movie, I thought it would be about a guy who likes bees and has his own bee farm, but this movie is packed with action and many intense moments. “The Beekeeper” came out in January of 2024 and has been one of the top movies I’ve seen so far this year. This movie has grossed over 151.8 million dollars in box offices and is still earning more each week. This 1 hour and 45 minute movie is a movie I highly recommend seeing.

The movie stars Jason Statham, who has previously starred in “Wrath of Man,” “Fast and Furious” and “Hummingbird.” Statham plays Mr. Clay, who lives on a farm with an older woman named Eloise Parke, played by Phylicia Rashad. For the first 10-15 minutes everything is so peaceful: Mr. Clay is attending to his bees and Eloise is just sitting in her house and enjoying coffee.

As we get farther into the movie, the peacefulness slowly goes away and the pace of the movie changes very quickly. Eloise is sitting on her computer in the house when a site pops up that leads her down a dark hole. The site that she finds is being run by a group that likes to steal millions of dollars from innocent people like Eloise. She thinks she is just buying insurance, but the company is able to get all of her information and take all the money she has.  She loses all her money and doesn’t know what to do, and she sadly takes her own life. We find this out when Mr. Clay goes into the house and discovers her body that night. This pushes Mr. Clay to find out who is doing this and start to go after the people that killed Eloise.

As the movie goes on, Mr. Clay becomes almost like an FBI agent willing to do anything to “protect the hive.” He finds the company that has been stealing millions of dollars from innocent old people. The leader of the company in their town is run by Mickey Garnett, who is played by David Witts. Mr. Clay goes into the company and threatens to burn it down, and for some reason no one stops him and he does burn the company that is in his town and also kills a couple of people while in the company. This leads the CEO of the company, Derek Danforth, who is played by Josh Hutcherson, to try to figure out who Mr. Clay is. From that point on, the movie is Mr. Clay outrunning and outsmarting the FBI, who has to try to figure out how to take him down somehow. 

From the beginning to the end, I think the plot was really engaging and complex, so it made the movie so much more interesting. I personally like action movies like this one, but this is one of my favorite ones I have seen in such a long time.

One  part of the plot that was especially entertaining was when the actual FBI gets involved and is trying to figure out how to stop Mr. Clay. The main leader of the FBI is actually the daughter of Eloise, Verona Parke, played by Emmy Raver-Lampman. They are also sending swat teams and so many officers after Mr. Clay, but Mr. Clay always finds ways to outsmart them. One of my favorite parts of the movie is when Mr. Clay has to go to the gas station and a group is sent after him and he blows the entire gas station up,

As I was getting to the end of the movie, I personally didn’t think that much more would happen, but I was wrong. Mr. Clay at the end still has the same actions as he did before, but for the end in the movie he is dressed in all black and gets more creative with the way he handles certain tasks. Some of the things he does were unexpected for me because everything happened so fast towards the end. I was even jumping from getting scared because he would do almost like sneak attacks on people.

Overall, “The Beekeeper,” was such a great movie and one I would personally go and watch again. I highly recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys action movies and plot changes throughout the entire movie. I personally think the plot and the climax really helps engage the audience and makes you want to keep watching it. This might just change your initial impression on what a beekeeper does to protect a hive.