Government-sanctioned killers — they’re just like us! They may commit acts of espionage and carnage on behalf of their respective covert agencies, but inside they long for a simpler and more authentic life, maybe something that involves being outdoors or working with their hands (and not in a blood-on-them sense). January happens to be the month in which people are most likely to quit their jobs, and is also the month traditionally reserved as a dumping ground for the movies studios expect nothing from. So it’s only fitting that the heroes of this January’s shlock action movies — The Beekeeper, The Bricklayer, and The Painter — are a trio of relatable kings who’ve left their gigs at clandestine organizations in favor of more straightforward vocations, like, you know, beekeeping, or bricklaying, or painting, at least until they’re called back for one last spate of set pieces.
But those of us who aren’t enjoying the more relaxed schedule that comes with a working retirement might have to prioritize which of these motion pictures to watch. So for your January viewing convenience, here’s a guide to help you choose which blue-collar killing-machine movie is right for you.
The Beekeeper
At the high end of this selection is this fantastically silly action movie from tough-guy director David Ayer, whose last feature, The Tax Collector, was about gang enforcers and not, unfortunately, about IRS agents running amuck. The Beekeeper takes a Mad Libs approach to moviemaking, with Jason Statham playing Adam Clay, a former member of a top-secret group called the Beekeepers who answer to no one and are dedicated to protecting society, which they refer to as “the hive†(the bee metaphors go into even more labored territory from there). Adam’s spurred back into action by the death of Eloise Parker, a retired teacher played by Phylicia Rashad who is his landlady and only friend, and whose life savings are stolen in a phishing scam. If call-center scammers feel like underwhelming adversaries for a guy who’s supposed to be a one-bee wrecking machine, well … they are. But they turn out to be part of a nefarious corporation owned by a start-up shithead played by Josh Hutcherson with ties going up to … the president of the United States. If you’re getting vague January 6 vibes from the prospect of Statham in blue-collar drag beating up tech-company employees in bullpens lit by giant LED screens, non-fatally mowing down FBI agents, and storming a presidential event, you’re not wrong. But Clay’s mandate and the film’s overall politics are so incomprehensible that you could make an equally plausible case for the plot being anti-Trump, too.
How much beekeeping do we get? Oh, rest assured, apiculture occurs. Adam rents a barn in rural Massachusetts from Rashad’s character, which he uses for his literal beekeeping efforts. Adorably, he harvests honey and labels it with the name of the person he intends to gift the jar to — though he only seems to know Eloise, making it unclear where the rest of his product is headed. Maybe he sells the surplus by way of an Etsy store? AdamClayApiary?
Yeah, but does he kill people using bees? Alas, no. He does kill a lot of people, though, some by way of his honey-harvesting equipment, which includes some kind of table saw he uses to chop off fingers (one of his repeat moves!). The action in The Beekeeper is suitably R-rated and generally satisfying — Statham knows his way around fight choreography — though it brings to mind the 2019 Wall Street Journal article about how Statham, Vin Diesel, and the Rock are contractually forbidden from losing a fight onscreen. It’s not until late in the film, when he runs into a dude who’d be best described as Guy Fieri if Guy Fieri were a South African mercenary, that he has the tiniest bit of trouble. The rest of the time he just tears through rooms of baddies without any visible effort or break in his perma-scowl.
So it’s worth seeing? Have I mentioned Jeremy Irons is in this, looking like a bored house cat? Or that there’s a Beekeeper on Beekeeper fight involving a woman dressed like she stopped by on her way to an ’80s cyberpunk-themed party? See it in a theater — this is what January releases are for.
The Bricklayer
The most nostalgic of these January offerings is this thriller from Renny Harlin, who in his ’90s heyday was responsible for hits like Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, and Deep Blue Sea, but who these days seems to only be able to get work abroad or on independently financed features that go the contemporary equivalent of straight to video. The Bricklayer was originally conceived of as a Gerard Butler vehicle, but after rattling around in development for over a decade, emerged as a day-and-date VOD release starring a game but not terribly compelling Aaron Eckhart as Steve Vail, once one of the CIA’s best and brightest, now working as a Philadelphia bricklayer who enjoys provolone on his hoagies and listening to jazz. In the novel the film’s based on, Steve is a former FBI agent who’s meant to be a Jack Reacher type, but the adaptation was clearly tweaked to shoot in Greece for financing and/or tax purposes, so he’s now instead a spy who’s at ease pretending to be a moneyed expat, choices that somewhat erode his aura of working-class solidity. Steve gets summoned back for an off-the-books operation following the reappearance of an old friend and freelancer named Victor Radek (Clifton Collins Jr.), who’s supposed to be dead, but has instead been murdering journalists and framing the agency. He’s paired with the uptight, inexperienced Kate (Nina Dobrev), with whom he does the kind of mildly sexist bickering that’s a throwback in a bad way. I’ve seen this movie twice for some reason and both times have failed to follow the final unraveling of what’s going on, more because the explanation was boring than because it was convoluted (though it is also that).
What’s going on on the masonry front? “I’m the bricklayer†is Steve’s first line in the movie. And he is! He looks so cheerful up on the roof of a building in the midst of renovation, knocking down old bricks with a sledgehammer and slathering mortar on new ones. Bricklaying is so important to his identity that he brings his tools with him to Greece, where they actually come in handy when he uses them to uncover a secret compartment in a villain’s home by removing a brick in the fireplace. Late in the film, he explains his philosophical attachment to bricklaying thusly: “When I hold a brick in my hand, I know exactly what it is and what it will do every single time. Its form is its function, and that gives me peace.†If you enjoy dialogue like that, you may enjoy this movie.
But how much bricklayer-oriented violence is there? Steve does eventually stab someone in the neck with his trowel, which is gratifying. But the masonry-themed action is otherwise confined to an early sequence in which Steve is attacked while on the job site, and is forced to use things like duct tape, a carabiner, and safety goggles to defeat his foes, one of whom he chokes out with a tape measure. The quality of the action sequences in the movie is generally erratic — Harlin appears to harbor John Wick aspirations but lacks the verve and timing to make his set pieces feel anywhere near as dynamic. Instead, he compensates by inserting some goofy-looking speed-ramping into a set piece in which Steve takes on a rooftop bar full of Eurotrash thugs.
Should I watch it? The Bricklayer isn’t worth seeking out — it’s ideally stumbled onto on cable TV on a hungover Saturday afternoon, when there’s plenty of time to reflect on how little time a slumming Tim Blake Nelson, playing the director of the CIA, must have spent on set.
The Painter
Firmly in the bottom tier of this grouping is this action movie from Kimani Ray Smith about another former CIA agent, Peter, played by Charlie Weber, who quits after an incident in which his wife and colleague Elena (Rryla McIntosh) is shot on the job, surviving while losing their baby. Or does she? No, she does. Or maybe she doesn’t! The Painter is rife with ludicrous twists, being the kind of movie that inserts a 17-year time skip that leaves everyone looking exactly the same, and the kind of movie where someone pulls a patch off the uniform of a dead strike-team member to find a CIA logo underneath. Weber, best known for the role of Frank on How to Get Away With Murder, proves himself to be a decent B-movie lead in that he’s capable of looking very earnest while uncovering the dark truth that the CIA is running a child-assassin program that they have opted to call, delightfully, “the Internship.†Peter, whose nickname is “the Painter,†was a murder prodigy himself, having been taken in as a boy by a CIA handler played by Jon Voight after an accident leaves him with hypersensitive hearing that he uses on the job. After he quits, he moves to Oregon to devote himself to his passion of painting, though how he’s lived off it for a decade plus remains a mystery, as his work apparently sells for $100 a pop at the local drinking hole. When a girl named Sophia (Madison Bailey), who appears to be around 17 years old, shows up claiming to be Elena’s daughter, Peter’s dragged away from his life of making bar art and indulging in black-and-white flashbacks.
He does a lot of painting, then? Not that much. Peter’s log cabin is indeed filled with originals, including paintings of Elena, which proves inconvenient for him when he tries to insist to Sophia that he has no idea who Elena is. But aside from an early scene, the painting itself mainly happens offscreen; it’s more of a private hobby than a professional calling. When a wild-eyed Internship grad named Ghost (Max Montesi) comes after Peter, he’s actually surprised to learn the Painter moniker is literal. “I always thought the name was a metaphor,†he muses. “The artistry aspect, that he’s so good he makes works of art, but with killing people.†Who among us, etc.
I’m guessing there’s no paintbrush deaths, then. Peter does off someone with what appears to be a palette knife, maybe? But the action in The Painter is so incoherent it’s hard to know for sure. Smith is a stunt coordinator and performer, a background that’s led to some great action fare in other contexts, but in this one, produces a mess of chopped-to-bits showdowns that sometimes seem to be missing coverage — Peter skips halfway across a room in the blink of a cut in one fight scene.
Not urgent viewing, then? A strictly let’s-pick-something-on-Tubi affair. (For now, it’s on VOD.)