Movie review: The Beekeeper (#290)
The Beekeeper [1] positions itself at the non-personal end of an emerging niche in blockbuster media tackling society’s struggles with the poorly understood repercussions mass-adopted digital technology without gatekeepers brings about.
Whereas over a quarter century ago, Hackers [2] celebrated a subculture in pursuit of freedom fighting against a rigid system of rules, without a doubt founded on the emergence of the Web and affordable Internet access evoking liberating visions of a digitally empowered society allowing the individual to flourish in its idiosyncrasy, twenty years later, when all shine of such musings seems to have been ground off, Hacked [3] depicts a deeply personal side of technology misuse and the perils bound up in its unquestioned glorification. Also personal, Inside [4] traps Nemo (played by Willem Dafoe) in an apathetic fight for relief in form of the sky whose ending leaves open if man has bested digital prison or vice versa.
The Beekeeper is insofar a novelty in popular media as it combines the non-glorifying, non-cliché omnium-gatherum of topics exemplified by the term hakr with the Free West’s struggle to uphold its rule of law faced with competent, multi-national adversaries empowered by p2p chatrooms.
Whilst a purist may turn up their nose at the visual and dramaturgical fluff which inseparably comes with a blockbuster, when keeping an open mind and seeing the story within a movie playing by the rules for being played to a non-vanishing audience, a polytheistic fable can be reclaimed in which an angered god descends onto a failing people which has lost their sense of righteousness, surgically removing the demon haunting it and disappearing. Seen from this angle, one isn’t confused by Adam Clay’s (played by Jason Statham) executive prowess nor his misaligned morals. As a non-human entity, the interpretation herein proclaims, unbound by classically freedom-preserving rule sets which appear to crumble in the globalized, digitalized world, Clay’s crassness can be viewed as a window to the horrors which await when the non-state organizations overpower.
Doomish as Civil War [5], but keeping itself to the more narrow topic of digital misuse aided through societal-wide ignorance, The Beekeeper does two things seldom seen together in popular cinema: a) questioning the efficacy of and ignoring the rule of law and b) tackling digital technology misuse without glorifying its technical side, focusing on the human misery.
REFERENCES. [1] "The Beekeeper" (German version). 2024. [2] "Hackers – Im Netz des FBI" (German version; English title: "Hackers"). 1995. [3] "Hacked – Kein Leben ist sicher" (German version; English title: "I.T."). 2016. [4] "Inside" (English version). 2023. [5] "Civil War" (German version). 2024.