In terms of well-done revenge movies, with a great opening idea, the new Jason Statham movie “The Beekeeper” is one of the best films of its kind I have ever seen and clearly the best action movie that Statham has ever starred with the lead role.

What draws you in, is the start of this movie, where an older woman Eloise Parker, played very well by Phylicia Rashad is at her laptop and like so many millions of us have seen, she receives a message on her screen that says, “call this number, your computer’s hard drive may be corrupted”. For those of us who have no real computer experience, calling the phone number is a natural thing that too many people would do, out of fear of losing important data on their computer. The other reason why so many call the number is that decent human beings can sometimes have a very hard time understanding just how disgusting the lowlife in this world can be. Who are these animals who prey on old people, try to scam, trick, and ultimately steal billions of dollars every year from so many good human beings. Life savings are stolen, representing years or decades of hard work. Too many victims commit suicide, realizing that their entire lives have been destroyed by the worst kind of criminal.

Adam Clay, played very well by Jason Statham is the neighbor and close friend of Eloise Parker, and once he finds out what happened to her, he embarks on a vendetta to destroy the entire organization that exists to collect data to find the right victims and steal money from millions of people, using technology and the internet. It turns out that Clay’s profession as a beekeeper was also his code name in a covert part of the CIA that gave Clay the highest level of Karate and hand-to-hand combat skills. What follows are the expected over-the-top and standard Statham Karate scenes, this time more violent and insane than some of Stathan’s previous movies. The ability of Adam Clay to kill so many, mostly FBI agents, and not be injured and killed himself is as crazy and implausible as any of the 4 John Wick movies. Regardless, the action scenes are as well done and impressive as I have seen in any Statham movie.

This film also stars Minnie Driver who plays Director Janet Harward of the FBI, in a surprisingly small role. Jeremy Irons plays Wallace Westwyld the CEO of a parent company that supports the many warehouses of criminals that spend all day preying on thousands of victims. I was surprised to see Irons in this movie because even though this movie is good, it is normally below the higher quality films that Irons has made in the past.

The only objection I had with this story is that the number of FBI agents that Adam Clay killed, seemed way out of proportion, considering that he was trying to wipe out a company comprised of the worst kind of criminals and the FBI agents were only trying to do their jobs.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings are once again wrong at 69%, with my rating a solid 85% for a very well-done action/revenge movie.