Showing posts with label Jason Statham. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jason Statham. Show all posts

Sunday, June 23, 2024

THE BEEKEEPER (2024)

"Who the fuck are you? Winnie-the-Pooh?"

The Beekeeper just wants to live a quiet life. He rents a small space from a nice older lady on her sleepy little farm where he can raise his bees in peace. Then some bustas ruin it by fucking with the old lady. So now Beekeeper’s gotta split some wigs. At first, he tries to do things peacefully by simply beating 20 people half to death and then burning down their building, but nope. They’re still mad. It’s war! So now, before you can say “Catch me at the cemetery visiting my enemies.” Beekeeper goes full red rum on these fools. No more playin', no more sayin', just Beekeeper sprayin' lead. Blood streamin', they fuckin' with a demon. Dial 911 and reserve you an ambulance cuz the Beekeeper is gonna give you a new car to ride in, known as a hearse. Sucka busta fuckas tryna run they game, but this shit ain't gon' stop. Beekeeper steady sending fools to the mortuary.  Have DoorDash deliver yo last meal to the cemetery. Killin' suckaz and droppin' bustas, makin' them scream in pain until his casket drops. Beekeeper has gone insane on these cheeky tossers.

You remember that scene in Wet Hot American Summer, season 1, episode 4 where the assassin The Falcon beats up the punk kids at the gas station then tells them “You kids stay in school.”, then kills them 4 seconds later? THE BEEKEEPER is kinda like a movie length version of that scene. Early on the Beekeeper claims that he only wants to get revenge on the scumbags who wronged his friend. Then he spends the rest of the movie injuring and killing everybody. Henchmen, FBI agents, Secret Service agents, various random people who just happen to be in the area. It’s awesome. Just violence piled upon violence with very little reason given. Honestly, if the filmmakers were going to go that far over the top I wish they had just gone full psycho and made every single scene even more insane than the previous scene.

As it is though, THE BEEKEEPER is silly as fuck and a lot of fun to laugh at. I’ve done zero research into it and knew literally nothing about it before I watch it, but I’m pretty sure the script (if there even was one) was written by A.I. or just a group of children. It doesn’t even make any sense or even try to make any sense. It’s awesome! Who needs logic or consequences, just have an indestructible dude go bonkers then jump off a cliff and walk into the ocean like Godzilla. The End. My only complaint is the lack of nudity and it wasn’t violent enough. Don’t fuck around, just full send it.

Writing challenge for myself: I’m about to go to the movie theater to see Ghost’s RITE HERE RITE NOW (again...I saw it last night also), but I still have 5 minutes before I need to head out. So, without any previous thinking about it, I’m going to write a BEEKEEPER sequel. Here we go!

Using the same beach as the final scene in the first movie, the Beekeeper walks out of the ocean. Next scene, he’s living on a small farm in Kansas with a kind family. He lives in the barn and tends to their bees. One weekend, the family goes to a local video store to rent THE BEEKEEPER on DVD, they are simple farm folk and don't have blu-ray. A gang of buttheads (that work for a local drug lord) talk shit to the mom and beat up the dad. Beekeeper finds out and spends the next 85 minutes murdering the motherfuckin’ crap out of everybody on the drug lords estate (think the end of COMMANDO). After killing all of the bad guys, the gore-covered Beekeeper hands an autographed copy of THE BEEKEEPER DVD to the family and walks off. Next scene, same beach as first movie, he once again walks into the ocean just like Godzilla. Fin. (haha. My heart is beating from typing so fast. Haha.) A Beekeeper / Jigsaw crossover would be awesome also. Gotta go-goat! I don't want my fangs too long. The moon to the left is a part of my thoughts.

Sunday, May 9, 2021

FAST & FURIOUS 6 (2013)

If 5 was where the FF series transitioned from street racing film to high-speed heist caper, then 6 is where it transitioned from racing heist series into racing heist superhero series. Don’t believe me? At one point in the film, one of our rugged heroes launches himself through the air to catch a person falling off a bridge and then uses a car to break his fall. And this is shortly after being shot in the shoulder and pulling the bullet out himself. So…what does all of that mean? It means it’s fucking awesome, that’s what! Logic and reality can go straight out the window. I just want to be entertained.

After making all those duckets from part 4, the team is sitting pretty. Living the good life, but then Agent Hobbs takes time from trying to break the world record for "World’s Tightest Shirt" to inform Torreto that Litty is still alive. Who? Yeah, I forgot too, but she’s the girl from the first movie who wore the giant shoes and snared a lot. Grrrr! Anyway, it appears that Litty has convenient movie amnesia and now works as a driver for a bad guy in Europe. She’s such an invaluable driver, in fact, that even after her boss finds out that she used to be Torreto’s girlfriend…he keeps her on the team! I’m sure that will work out well for him. It doesn’t.

Fast pace; glorification of police brutality; multiple pretty locations (Spain, England, Scotland, Los Angeles); too many action scenes shot at night; Luke Evans as the new bad guy (I really liked him in The Alienist and The Pembrokeshire Murders, but he didn’t have much stage presence here); the longest airport runway in movie history; Kim Kold grossly underused…he should have be in way more scenes; Ludacris with a ludicrous amount of computer monitors; men and women all politely fist-fighting within their preferred sexual classifications; Dwayne Johnson still around (thankfully), but his character doesn’t progress at all…in fact, he makes multiple bad decisions and his overall character grew more two-dimensional in this installment; the subject of innocent people dying and getting injured during the car chases was brought up, but a lot of innocent people were still obviously killed in this story; cool fight scenes that were weakened by having the camera too close to the action; lots of wonderfully cheesy dialogue; breaking a thousand laws and then praying before eating; Han and Gisele still madly in love despite never doing more than just looking at each other with zero on-screen chemistry; people wrecking cars in all kinds of violent and horrible ways and never getting injured; multiple chances to take out the bad guy; the verbal sparring between Roman and Tej getting stale; pointless snobby auctioneer scenes that added nothing to the story and should have been cut; zero uses (that I noticed) of the word “busta”; some truly bizarre efforts to make Dwayne Johnson appear shorter than he really is; a completely overly complicated (aka amusing) hacking device that has to be shot out of a gun to then be used to hack a car via a tablet, causing it to wreck…if you can shoot the vehicle to implant the device, then why not just shoot it with an explosive?

Overall, while I did enjoy the film, I still think it was weaker and less focused than 5. Also, if some of those dark nighttime action scenes had been in the daytime, I would have liked the film better. Still, it’s 100% worth watching for fans of the series.  It's been a lot of fun seeing how the series evolves throughout the years.  I'm hoping for a Fast and Furious / Saw crossover next!

Part 1 - The Fast and the Furious (2001)
Part 2 - 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)
Part 3 - The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)
Part 4 - Fast & Furious (2009)
Part 5 - Fast Five (2011)
Part 7 - Furious 7 (2015)
Part 8 - The Fate of the Furious (2017)
Spin-off 1 - Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)
Part 9 - F9 (2021)
Part 10 - Fast X (2023)