The Beekeeper

The efforts to generate buzz in The Beekeeper wind up taking the sting out of the latest Jason Statham action vehicle.

For all of its formulaic tendencies, at least this thriller from director David Ayer (Suicide Squad) has a bizarrely quirky premise to provide some mild amusement. Yet eventually, it settles into a familiar narrative pattern once Statham embarks on his quest for vigilante justice.

He plays Adam Clay, who leases a barn from a retiree (Phylicia Rashad) to tend to his hive and run his honey operation. Then the old lady is targeted by online scammers who steal her substantial nest egg, and she later winds up dead.

That obviously draws suspicion from her daughter, Verona (Emmy Raver-Lampman), an FBI agent who is unaware of the working arrangement involving Clay and initially targets him as a suspect. Even after he sets the record straight, their alliance is unstable.

Meanwhile, those rich scumbags definitely deserve a comeuppance, with federal investigators slowed up by procedure, so Clay — who happens to have experience as a top-secret military operative — takes matters into his own hands.

He begins by cleaning house at a massive data-mining call center before winding his way toward its beneficiary (Josh Hutcherson), a drugged-out tech entrepreneur with affluent connections and an exasperated security chief (Jeremy Irons) who clearly regrets his career trajectory.

Along the way, Clay tosses off some apiculture metaphors with straight-faced macho glee while nonchalantly and systematically dispatching hopelessly overmatched bad guys. An example: “Sometimes I use fire to smoke out hornets.”

The screenplay by Kurt Wimmer (Law Abiding Citizen) doesn’t make much sense, but at least it doesn’t take itself too seriously as it funnels toward a predictable climactic showdown.

It opens with a cautionary tale about cybercrimes targeting the elderly that sufficiently gets your blood boiling, then squanders that tension with cartoonish villains and their dysfunctional family drama.

The film loses its sweetness about halfway through when it detours into a vast and preposterous conspiracy theory involving secret organizations and high-level political corruption in a misguided effort to add moral complexity.

Ayer choreographs some of the fight sequences and set pieces with visual flair, but The Beekeeper swarms with more brawn than brains.

Rated R, 105 minutes.