January 18, 2024 – Jason Statham has been a leading man in action films since “The Transporter” in 2002, so he knows the part well, and he's solid again as a one-man vengeance army in this film. The difference in this film is that he's got some effective supporting characters who make this film more appealing.

Statham plays Adam Clay, a mysterious former “Beekeeper” operative of a super secret agency that's a lot like the one in the “Kingsman” movies. When you have a problem that all the normal agencies of government can't handle, you call in the Beekeepers. Clay is retired, but he returns to action when the life of his best friend, Eloise Parker (Phylicia Rashad of the “Creed” movies) is ruined by online scammers, causing her to commit suicide.

Clay is not the only one after the scammers, however, Parker's daughter, Verona (Emmy Raver-Lampman of “Blacklight”) and her FBI partner, Agent Matt Wiley (Bobby Naderi of “How I Got There”) are also on the trail of the scammers. They also pick up Clay's trail of destruction along the way. Clay is destroying the scammers from the ground up.

It turns out that the scammers have connections in very high places that protect them. When threatened by Clay, the scammers unleash an army of mercenaries to hunt him down and kill him.

Another thing that makes this action movie different is that Clay doesn't rely on guns very often. Mostly, he just kicks people around and beats them up, and dispatches them in a variety of different, inventive ways. The bad guys all have guns, of course, including a vehicle-mounted mini-gun. The bad guys keep missing because that's what bad guys do when shooting at action movie heroes. Clay doesn't even need a bullet proof vest.

As Clay works his way up the scammer organization, Verona and Wiley are getting some strange signals from their superiors which make them think there is some kind of conspiracy going on. Little do they know who's behind all this death and destruction until near the end of the movie. Emmy Raver-Lampman and Bobby Naderi make a nice team in this movie. They work well together and play off each other very effectively, making this movie better than it would otherwise be.

The principal bad guys are played by veteran actor Jeremy Irons (“House of Gucci”) and Josh Hutcherson (the “Hunger Games” movies). Irons, who plays Wallace Westwyld, a former government official, is smarter, more responsible and more aware of the danger posed by Clay than is his boss, Derek Danforth (Hutcherson) a corrupt, entitled sociopath.

The body count is very high in this movie, but it is constructed, as many movies of this kind are, to minimize graphic violence in favor of more comic book style action. An attempt is also made to minimize deaths among those who aren't really bad people. This is the very essence of the kind of enjoyable popcorn movie usually reserved for the summer season. It rates a B.

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