Adam Clay's assault on FBI agents and a tactical team blends eighties cheese with modern action movie sensibilities.
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One of my favorite stories from the last year or so has been the surge in enthusiasm for silly R-rated action movies. And one movie has stood out amongst the rest: David Ayer's Jason Statham vehicle The Beekeeper. But how do you explain this movie's appeal to someone who's seen Jason Statham movies for the last twenty years? I mean the Transporter trilogy is right there and won't cost you much more than 90 minutes a pop. What does The Beekeeper bring to the table? A fascinating blend of the eighties action mindset and modern mixed martial bouts, perfectly highlighted in this two-tier brawl against FBI agents and then a group of mercenaries.
The Scene
At this point in the movie, former Beekeeper Adam Clay is officially on the warpath against Danforth Enterprises and its wide network of scammers. His next target? The Nine Star United Center. It's such an obvious target that the FBI has dispatched a SWAT team to keep the facility safe and intercept Clay and Danforth's head of security has sent over a fully armed black ops team to defend the call center. And it doesn't matter. Because even with full knowledge that he's about to arrive, Clay tears through both sets of men like a hot knife through butter.
Why It Works
Build Up
When you have a bad ass hero in your action movie, it's a great idea to build that character and their violent capabilities up. Preferably with an exposition dump given by a very charismatic character to really hammer the idea home and get the audience hyped to see this hero in action.
The Beekeeper does this multiple times over the course of the movie via Jeremy Irons (who's playing a former CIA director turned private security contractor), who knows all about "The Beekeepers" and what they're capable of. Before this scene begins we've been told what Adam Clay is capable of, seen him take out a data center, surprise some dudes who tried to attack him in his home and even kills another Beekeeper the CIA sends to take him out (so quickly they seem to throw in the towel).
Normally this is where a character like Irons would give a pep talk to warn his band of mercenaries brought in to defend this call center about how their numbers will help them against this lethal man. Instead he does the opposite and tells them that they're no match for Clay but he's gotta throw them at this problem so best of luck. It's such a defeated speech that it feels like Clay has already taken them all out...now all we have to do is wait...but first we've got some FBI guys in play.
Subversion
One of the unspoken action movie tropes is that good guys try to avoid hurting innocent people. A great example of this is how Mission Impossible's Ethan Hunt's heist all involve subverting security versus taking out the team or how he doesn't fight with random cops or other government agents unless they're trying to capture or stop him.
So when the setup is "this call center has a bunch of highly armed goons inside," and we see a fully armed SWAT team outside, it's fair to assume that Statham's Adam Clay will try to avoid them and opt for a stealthy approach.
And we'd be wrong.
Instead Statham goes right at the SWAT team asking if they're looking for him before non-lethally taking out the entire team with a series of grapple takedowns, gunshots into vests, and punches. It's a sequence that no only reinforces Clay's vidfeeo game character like bonafides, this Arkham Asylum like fighting, it also lets the audience know that Clay is brazen enough to take on supposedly secure targets. Like say...the White House.
I also really like this fighting style for Statham. Statham has never been a giant dude, so a lot of his bad-ass bonafides have emphasized his agility. Admittedly Statham in'ts getting any younger so getting greased up and doing Transporter high kicks is probably out. But this mixed martial arts where he moves faster and more instinctively in close quarters than cops who he's caught flat-footed? That works really well.
I also really like this fighting style for Statham. Statham has never been a giant dude, so a lot of his bad-ass bonafides have emphasized his agility. Admittedly Statham in'ts getting any younger so getting greased up and doing Transporter high kicks is probably out. But this mixed martial arts where he moves faster and more instinctively in close quarters than cops who he's caught flat-footed? That works really well.
Director David Ayer has also progressed as an action filmmaker and drifts back and forth between close-ups highlighting each strike or grapple to the ultimate image which is a pile of bodies all about to writhe on the ground because of our hero.
This also works really well when paired with the hit and run tactics Clay uses in the second part of the bout.
Variety
While the first part of this action beat is an unexpected, straightforward beat down. The second part is like a scene from The Predator as Clay uses his quickness and silent kills to take out the team on his trail. So instead of having a signature weapon he seems to be going through a tool bag including knives, ropes, his opponents weapons and the environment to take out this heavily armed mercenary team one by one.
There's a lot of reasons I like this. I like the neon dunked environment that makes the fellas in tactical gear stick out like a sore thumb whether it's the blue hue or the deep red when the alarms are going off. I like the shift from the straight-forward aggressiveness against the S.W.A.T. team to the hit and run tactics here.
There's a lot of reasons I like this. I like the neon dunked environment that makes the fellas in tactical gear stick out like a sore thumb whether it's the blue hue or the deep red when the alarms are going off. I like the shift from the straight-forward aggressiveness against the S.W.A.T. team to the hit and run tactics here.
And I also like this running theme that the Beekeeper doesn't need or want to use guns, or at least not his own. While this entire team of mercs unloads clip after clip the only they actually hit are the call center computers or their own teammates when Clay drops into the middle of them and spins their trigger happy leader around.
Likewise, there's no logical way that Clay could somehow escape into the ceiling and come down with wiring to use as his primary weapon in all of this. But busting out of a ceiling for ambush is always satisfying.
This variety also demonstrates that Clay can basically take out whatever's in front of him. Superior numbers? No problem. Superior firepower? Also no problem. Two sets of highly armed men who know he's coming? Also no problem. At best all you can do is hope he finishes things quickly.
Conclusion: Accomplishing A Lot At Once
While almost all of the action beats in this movie are satisfying, this one is my favorite. Not just because the action choreography is crisp and the generally set up is fun. But because this scene accomplishes so much at once. Here's quick checklist of everything this scene does.
- Reinforces Adam Clay's bad-ass bonafides so that we the audience can suspend our disbelief that this guy will be able to run and gun his way into the White House by the film's end.
- Establishes that Clay will certainly fight regular law enforcement, but won't kill them (he has a code).
- Is a logical next step in Clay working his way up the corrupt food chain (so plot)
- Pays off Jeremy Irons anti-pep talk to the team of mercenaries.
- Gives the audience another hit of adrenaline by abiding by the 15-20 minute rule established by Joel Silver way back when.
- Provides just enough conflicting actions (i.e. attacking cops and criminals) to give our cop in pursuit of Clay some morality issues to reflect on.
As odd as it seem, this is a character scene for Clay that reveals everything he's capable of and what he will and won't do to "protect the hive." Which is exactly what you want in an action scene. Next stop, the White House!
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