THE BEEKEEPER is a proudly absurd new Jason Statham vehicle where he plays a humble beekeeper – a guy who cultivates beehives and collects honey. But also he’s retired from being another type of Beekeeper – an operative for a secret organization who kill bad guys and use bee, hive and queen metaphors to describe their role in protecting civilization. (Not puns, though, sadly.) It has a good pedigree as far as these things go – the director is David Ayer (HARSH TIMES, STREET KINGS, SABOTAGE, FURY, SUICIDE SQUAD) and the writer is Kurt Wimmer (DOUBLE TROUBLE, EQUILIBRIUM, ULTRAVIOLET, director of ONE TOUGH BASTARD). Not that you really need that information. Honestly if you’re not sold on “Jason Statham plays an asskicking beekeeper” alone I don’t know what your deal is. But also I’m kinda glad because I wrote a whole review, I hope you will read it.
I’m not the first to note that this is a very January movie, that month dismissed as a dumping ground, which really means it’s a good time to release a certain type of mid-budget, low expectations studio action movie I dig. January releases of the last decade include TAKEN 3, WILD CARD, THE COMMUTER, PROUD MARY, DEN OF THIEVES, THE RHYTHM SECTION, THE MARKSMAN, and PLANE. Some of these I saw on video, some I saw in the theater, probly at a show starting between 12:50 and 1:30, with less than five other people in the theater, all men, all by themselves. That’s the natural state of this type of movie, in my experience.
THE BEEKEEPER takes the tradition of the January-ass action movie a little further. It’s not elevated January, but maybe January+. It looked so promising my wife wanted to see it too, so we went to a 7:30 pm show on the six story tall, 80’ wide Imax screen in the Science Center. With no one else in the theater. It was beautiful. (read the rest of this shit…)
For many years, Warner Brothers had pretty good luck making Batman and Superman movies. With SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE they pretty much invented the comic book movie. With BATMAN they reinvigorated it. Sure, there were 
FURY is an intense, well-made WWII movie. It doesn’t feel like just another forgettable same ol’ same ol’ type of war picture. For one thing, the focus on the crew of one tank makes for some unique and thrilling combat scenes. One battle scene in particular really shows the strategy of tank on tank action. They’re like pirate ship battles waged from inside vans. Or like giant turtles trying to outmaneuver each other. Not all battles are just about who has the most guns. And filming inside real tanks really adds to the realistic feel I think. It’s pretty damn cool.
Listen all y’all, SABOTAGE is a great vehicle for Arnold Schwarzenegger right now. It’s a good mix of what you expect from him and what you don’t. It’s a movie that benefits from his Huge Movie Star presence. He can just walk in and the legendary badass backstory of his character, DEA squad leader John “Breacher” Wharton, manifests physically before our eyes. He can strut and bark commands and joke and you fully believe that his unruly team of trained killers – even big Joe Manganiello, who towers over him – respect, fear, and look up to him like he’s their dad.
Although welcomed into THE EXPENDABLES with open arms by action fans, Terry Crews is one of the cast members with the least experience in straight up action movies. He was brought in late in the game to replace 50 Cent shortly after 50 Cent was brought in late in the game to replace Forest Whitaker. (Or at least that’s how it was reported, but I thought Whitaker was supposed to be playing CIA agent Will Sands, and Crews ended up playing Expendables team member and excellent-name-haver Hale Caesar.) 
