The Beekeeper

Director: David Ayer
Starring: Jason Statham, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Josh Hutcherson, Bobby Naderi, Minnie Driver, David Witts, Michael Epp, Jemma Redgrave, Phylicia Rashad, Jeremy Irons
Running Time: 105 min.
Rating: R

★★★ (out of ★★★★) 

Those complaining we don't get nearly enough movies about beekeepers will be pleased that director David Ayer delivers an entertainingly over-the-top action thriller starring Jason Statham as its title character. An open invitation to check your brain at the door, this finds the ass kicking actor again stepping into that heroic vigilante role he's mastered throughout his career. The plot couldn't be simpler, as our quiet but deadly protagonist plows through armies of criminals, FBI agents, local law enforcement and anyone else preventing him from administering some John Wick-style justice.

The protagonist's occupational duties go a bit further than you'd expect, also working as another type of beekeeper who's tasked with "protecting the hive" that is the United States. And like 007, this isn't exactly the type of job you just retire or walk away from. Initially content to call it a career by leaving the violence and adventure behind, a ruthless scam brings him back to get even. But this time it's personal, with this enforcer dirtying his hands to do what the law can't or won't.

Adam Clay (Statham) leads a quiet life as a beekeeper, renting space in a barn owned by retired school teacher and philanthropist Eloise Parker (Phylicia Rashad), who commits suicide after falling victim to an online phishing scam that drains over $2 million from her bank account. After discovering Eloise's body, Adam is questioned by her daughter, FBI agent Verona Parker (Emmy Raver-Lampman) who tells him the bureau is attempting to track down the company that did it. Instead, Adam takes matters into his own hands by destroying a call center and using his ties with a shadow organization called the Beekeepers to locate the data company's vice president, Derek Danforth (Josh Hutcherson). 

As Adam closes in, the whiny Derek begs for help from security head and former CIA director Wallace Westwyld (Jeremy Irons). But despite his many connections and access to hired mercenaries, an extremely dangerous Adam proves unstoppable, in the process exposing a massive cover-up with far reaching implications. It's up to Verona and FBI partner Agent Wiley (Bobby Naderi) to somehow stop his rampage, even as her very personal connection to the case indicates she may not want to.

This scam itself is commonplace, but it's still gripping to watch each step of the process unfold on screen in such detail. A key strength of Kurt Wimmer's script is its focus on this vulnerable senior being taken for a ride by a slimy, obnoxious call center manager (David Witts) and his boiler room of heartless minions. An effective hook that helps audiences sympathize with the victim, it simultaneously gives Adam even greater motivation to restore what he calls a sense of "balance" to society.  

Eloise not immediately contacting her FBI agent daughter after being scammed can be chalked up to the emotional trauma of the moment, but the bureau's of little help anyway. That's the purpose of beekeepers like Adam, even as we wonder why the government doesn't just dedicate an eighth of the resources they throw at him toward cracking down on these crimes. It's an idea not lost on the film every time this commando vanquishes an obstacle standing between him and Hutchinson's spoiled nepo baby character. As Westwyld, Jeremy Irons brings some welcome gravitas, knowing the hole Derek's dug himself into and wanting no part of it. But in the end, he really has little choice.

At this point, Statham could probably play this part in his sleep, with Adam donning disguises, sneaking in and out of secured buildings and using guns, knives, bombs, martial arts to casually clobber everyone in sight. Existing on the periphery of these thrillingly staged and sometimes unintentionally hilarious action scenes is the notion Verona's chasing the man avenging her mother's death, making her job that much harder. And Raver-Lampman conveys that inner conflict subtly in a movie where restraint isn't the top priority. 

Just based on the insanely high body count and how early the beekeeper enacts revenge, you'd think this could end within the first thirty minutes. In actuality, the mission's just beginning, with Adam's quest eventually reaching the highest level of government. Those in his path will find out the hard way that it's never a good idea to kick a hornet's nest, especially one belonging to a wrecking machine dead set on exterminating the queen of the hive. Taking a straightforward, apolitical stance against agencies that leave the most helpless without recourse, The Beekeeper implies someone like Statham could come in handy. Or better yet, it reminds us that the system should never be broken enough for us to need him.     

The Expendables

Director: Sylvester Stallone
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Steve Austin, Terry Crews, Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, Eric Roberts, Charisma Carpenter, David Zayas
Running Time: 103 min.
Rating: R

★★ (out of ★★★★) 

The Expendables offers up the opportunity to see a dream team of action stars on acting auto-pilot shoot people in a film destined to head straight the discount DVD bin. Sly Stallone wrote, directed, produced and stars, continuing the 80's action nostalgia comeback he recently mounted with Rocky Balboa and Rambo and I was really taken aback by just how lackluster it is since the idea of teaming these guys up had some potential. Everything that could possibly go wrong nearly does as the film plays just as if he gathered his pals and over a few beers decided to shoot an action movie for kicks. But it's biggest crime is that it isn't even any fun, which should be the absolute minimum expected from something like this. Stallone grunts his way through one of his least engaging lead performances without much support from the rest of the cast. The Disposables may have been a better title as only two actors emerge from it relatively unscathed, and that's only because they're given so little to do. Everyone else looks foolish for having even appeared in it, forcing me to actually applaud Van Dam and Segal for having the foresight to sit this one out.

The Expendables of the title are a group of six mercenaries consisting of Stallone's veiny, tattooed leader Barney Ross, bad-ass Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), height challenged martial arts expert Ying Yang (Jet Li), cauliflower eared Toll Road (Randy Couture), angry, unintelligible giant Gunner Jensen (Dolph Lundgren) and the intimidating Hale Cesar (Terry Crews), who doesn't speak softly and carries a big gun.  They're hired for a dangerous assignment by the mysterious Mr. Church (Bruce Willis, in a church) to assassinate Central American dictator, General Garza (David Zayas), who's been running drugs with rogue CIA agent James Munroe (Eric Roberts). Initially given the offer because they're "expendable," Ross makes it personal when he kind of develops a thing for the dictator's daughter, Sandra (Giselle Itie), who loyally puts her country and its people ahead of her own well being. Mercifully for us, the script doesn't explore that potential relationship at all, as if there would be time anyway in the midst of all the gunfire. Despite vague attempts by the script to assign its members' clever nicknames, backstories and characteristics, for honesty's sake they could have easily just been called Stallone, Statham, Li, Crews, Couture and Lundgren and no one would have noticed. And I haven't even gotten to Austin and Rourke. It's obvious the big draw here is seeing all these top action stars on screen together at once for the first time and Stallone is so in love with the idea (in all fairness a pretty good one) that he decides to just rest on that, denying us a plot we can rally behind.

Arnold Schwarzenegger's much buzzed about cameo is indicative of the many missed opportunities to  give this all-star lineup interesting characters to play. His brief early scene with Stallone and Willis is pointless, existing only as an attention-grabbing distraction and a chance for a few old buddies to have a laugh while winking at the camera. Worse still, "The Governator" isn't even given any good lines before disappearing at the blink of an eye. No "I'll be back" or anything. There was a point where I actually thought the three would turn to the camera and start talking about how cool it is they're all onscreen together and how lucky we are to witness it, which could have been true had the scene meant anything. Mickey Rourke continues blazing his bizarre post-Oscar career trail with a turn as philosophical ex-team member, Tool, who's pretty much the Mr. Miyagi of tattoo artists. Rourke is Rourke, which is always good for some fun even in small doses. It's too bad Eric Roberts is still Eric Roberts and has long past the point where he's become a complete parody of himself. He's at his cheesy, scenery chewing worst here and it's a shame he felt the need to follow up a somewhat respectable turn in The Dark Knight with this. Despite being one of the weak links in that film, at least Nolan reined him in, but if he wants to be taken seriously as an actor again it would help to stop taking joke parts like this. As his right-hand man, Paine, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin is required mostly to stand there and look intimidating, which he does well, but knowing the life span of henchmen in action movies, don't expect to see him in the sequel. The female "love interest" is as bland as they come and the casting of Dexter's David Zayas as an evil dictator is laughably off the mark. Of the actual Expendables, only Statham entertains (particularly when disposing of some guys during a scene on a basketball court) but that's not surprising given that he can play the tough guy role in his sleep. Stallone instead literally plays it in his sleep, reminding us how bad he can be when saddled with a script (in this case his own) that doesn't given him anything to do but mumble and growl.

While the entire plot of The Expendables is half-heartedly conceived, the routine action scenes at least look believable, lacking obvious CGI. I was never bored and Stallone (still a competent action director despite this misfire) keeps everything moving at a good clip. If he didn't, a movie that's merely lazy and uninspired could have easily turned unbearable. What started as a promising idea on paper plays onscreen as a "Planet Hollywood" reunion when so much more could have been done and all the tools were there to do it. Stallone's already rounding up the cast for The Expendables II, so here's hoping he eventually follows through with his original plan of paying tribute to high octane 80's blockbusters rather than honoring late 90's direct-to-DVD action movies starring Eric Roberts.

Crank 2: High Voltage

Director: Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor
Starring: Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Efrem Ramirez, Dwight Yoakam, Bai Ling
Running Time: 96 Min.
Rating: R

★★★ (out of ★★★★)

Sometimes there's nothing like great trash. 2006's Crank was great trash. Crank 2: High Voltage is dirtier great trash. When I found out about this sequel my first thought was, "HOW?" But I should have known that you just don't ask any questions. The sequel picks up literally where the original left off, without skipping a beat or pausing to worry about how our hero could have possibly survived a 10,000 feet fall from a helicopter. Just as the tagline says, "He was dead...But He Got Better." That's all we need. The first movie was jacked up, high adrenaline fun that lacked any semblance of logic, but succeeded because it understood that and proudly rubbed our faces in it. It was more a video game adaptation than most films actually adapted from video games, knowing its place as a wicked satire of action films and never taking itself seriously.

Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor's follow-up provides more insane awesomeness while adding bonus humor and vulgarity. It's sexist, racist and homophobic but they get away with it all by simply being in on the joke. Little needs to be said about any movie that features a shotgun being shoved up someone's rectum, nipples and elbows being cut off, a woman being shot in her silicone implants, a character with "Full Body Tourette's," a disembodied talking head and a title card that reads "9 SECONDS LATER." That time frame pretty much lets you know about the attention span required to follow the action. This definitely isn't for all (or maybe any) tastes but if you loved the first film you'll love this since it's essentially just a repeat of its prequel, even so much as cribbing individual scenes and situations, but with a nastier, more mean-spirited tone. As incredulous as they were, the events in the first movie did at least seem to spring organically out of the craziness the protagonist found himself in. Here, they're just piled on one after another for shock value which makes for a slightly inferior film but does nothing to lessen how entertaining it is. The novelty may be gone, but the thrills aren't.

Hitman Chev Chelios (Jason Statham), who in the original film was injected with a deadly Chinese cocktail that would kill him if his heart stopped pumping adrenaline, is scraped off the L.A. pavement after his deadly fall by Chinese mobsters. He wakes up three months later to discover they've replaced his indestructible ticker with an artificial battery-powered heart just long enough to keep him alive to harvest the rest of his organs. He escapes and finds out from Doc Miles (Dwight Yoakam) that he must keep electricity running through his body to stay alive and hopefully reclaim his real heart from crime lord Johnny Vang (Art Hsu). Meanwhile, his girlfriend, Eve (Amy Smart), thinking he was dead, wasted no time getting on with her life and took up an interesting new profession, which effectively adds another layer of sleaze to an already very sleazy movie.

Whereas the original somewhat resembled an action movie of sorts, this one is a full-on parody loaded with rogues gallery of bizarre characters and weird events, jumping a mile a minute from one scenario to the next as Chev has to find creative ways to keep his artificial heart charged. Like him, we don't even get a second to catch our breath. This is the best example of an achievement of style over substance if there ever was one but Neveldine and Taylor do deserve credit as writers for coming up with a clever scenario to keep the franchise running and recognizing that the only way they were going to pull this off was to throw caution to the wind and turn the volume up on everything that worked in the first.

At the end of that film no one could stop talking about the infamous Chinatown scene and this time no one will be able to stop talking about the racetrack scene, which is really just an encore of it, except far crazier and more graphic. Amy Smart, so memorable in the first film, is given more to do this time around and plays an even larger role. We can hope she's paid really well for these movies considering the amount of sexual degradation her character endures, which she admirably never backs down from. And while the first interspersed classic rock songs over the soundtrack (i.e. Jefferson Starship's "Miracles") at the most insane moments, you'll have similar problems listening to The Marshall Tucker Band and REO Speedwagon the same way again after this.

You don't have to have seen the original to fully appreciate the sequel but it helps since there are many subtle and not so subtle nods to it throughout. In addition to Smart and Yoakam reprising their roles, Efren Ramirez returns, but as the twin brother of his flamboyant character from the previous movie. There's also a parade of welcome appearances from the likes of Gerri Haliwell (in something resembling a flashback scene), porn star Ron Jeremy, an unrecognizable Clifton Collins Jr., Corey Haim (in a mullet!) and a well disguised David Carradine in one of his final completed roles. Bai Ling's weirdness is utilized the best it's been yet as psycho Asian prostitute Ria.

Is it hypocritical of me to slam something like Transformers: ROTF while praising high-octane garbage like this? No, because this knows exactly what it is and doesn't pretend to be anything more. It actually pretends to be a whole lot less, playing more like a low-budget grindhouse exploitation flick than a mainstream action movie. Plus, this has Statham who's always a reliable bad ass and it capable of selling just about any crazy situation. The film's wildest moment is a power plant brawl that cleverly spoofs the Godzilla movies. No one can watch that scene and tell me the filmmakers aren't just out to deliver a fun time, nor can you hold the final product on screen to any normal standard of good taste. It might be slightly messier and uneven, but Crank 2 is riskier, succeeding exactly where its predecessor did in providing the ultimate mindless thrill fix.

Crank

Directors: Mike Neveldine and Brian Taylor
Starring: Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Efren Ramirez, Jose Pablo Castillo, Dwight Yoakam, Carlos Sanz
Running Time: 86 min.
Rating: R

***1/2 (out of ****)

Crank fulfills its promise as an adrenaline thrill-ride that never slows down.  Literally an assault on the senses, it's an 87-minute video game on crack. The filmmaking style employed in this is frantic and definitely not for all tastes and to say it's for the music video generation is putting it lightly. That said, I loved every second of it. It takes an incredible premise and jams it down our throats, rarely giving us a second to think or breathe.

Watching this is like eating cinematic junk food. It gives you instant gratification but it's bad for you and you're craving for something more substantial an hour later. Upon reflection though, maybe not. It actually took a lot of talent and skill to put something like this together and it does stay with you because amidst all the chaos is a good story with interesting characters and clever ideas. I can't remember the last time I had this much fun watching an action movie. Plus, you have to respect any film that contains Napoleon Dynamite's Pedro as a cross-dresser, a roof party with girls in plastic bubbles, and a main character consuming copious amounts of nasal spray to stay alive.

Professional hitman Chev Chelios (The Transporter's Jason Statham) wakes up shaking and sweating in front of a flat screen TV with a DVD taped to it. When he pops it in he sees footage of himself a night earlier being injected with a "Bejing Cocktail" by his crime boss rival Verona (Jose Pablo Cantillo). This poisonous substance will kill him once his heart rate drops and it settles in his bloodstream. The only way to delay the inevitable: don't stop moving and keep the adrenaline flowing. Fighting to stay alive and out for revenge against the man who poisoned him, Chev must turn to his physician, Doc Miles (a hilarious Dwight Yoakam) and his cross-dressing friend, Kaylo (Dynamite's Efren Ramirez) for answers, before it's too late. He must also come clean with his girlfriend Eve (Amy Smart), who thinks he works as a videogame designer.

The opening credit sequence cleverly employs 80's video game graphics and the film is so fast and the editing so slick that I imagined Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer watching on their couches in jealousy. This may be the first movie I've seen that could qualify as a live action video game. It's Grand Theft Auto come to life. This would problematic if not for the fact that it fits the story perfectly: If he can't stop moving, why should the movie? I'm not going to spoil all the clever ways the script has Chev keep his adrenaline levels up, but let's just say there's a scene in Chinatown that has to be seen to be believed. Before I saw this, somebody told me "Wait until you see the scene in Chinatown!"

What co-directors and writers Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor pull off here is very tricky as it's incredibly difficult to make an action movie these days that isn't some kind of variation on an idea we've seen before. This is completely original and I have feeling it's likely destined to become a cult classic. I also think much of this film will be lost on older viewers who haven't been a part of the video game generation and likely wouldn't understand where this is coming from. That's okay though, because they're not the audience this is aimed at anyway.

I can't think of an actor more perfect for the role of Chev than Statham. Even with his eyes bugging out of his head and in full bad-ass mode you like the guy and you're rooting for him, which is of primary importance in an action movie. He brings an intensity to the screen that's unmatched by today's other action stars and I could eventually see him emerging as a strong dramatic actor if he ever chooses that direction. I like how when we meet his girlfriend, she's not at all who you'd expect this guy to be with, and Amy Smart is really endearing in the role. The casting of Ramirez and Yoakam also prove that while the the movie kicks ass and takes names, it's never taking itself too seriously and is often hilarious.

Best of all, I challenge anyone to be able to guess the ending of this film. You think you know where it's going, but by the last ten minutes you have no idea. Some will likely take exception with the final scene, calling it unrealistic, self congratulatory and bombastic but no one can claim it's not in line with the tone of the rest of the film. Plus, you have to give props to any directors with the guts to use Jefferson Starship song to close their film. It's easy to get so caught up in analyzing films and forget the main reason we watch movies is to have fun. The thrilling Crank is that reminder.