‘The Beekeeper’
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There have been plenty of “John Wick” copies, but David Ayer’s “The Beekeeper” is one of the few to get it right. In it, a rich man upsets a former assassin when his online fraud venture takes the life savings of a retired teacher (Phylicia Rashad), causing her to die by suicide. When the rich guy, Derek Danforth (Josh Hutcherson), tells his security chief, Wallace Westwyld (Jeremy Irons), that the assassin Adam Clay (Jason Statham) wants revenge, Westwyld is horrified. Clay’s beekeeping isn’t solely a retirement gig; it’s also the code name for the government’s off-the-books contract killers.
As you’d expect, Ayer’s film is a showcase for Statham. Few contemporary action stars can deliver his brand of ruthless destruction and savage wisecracks. To get to Danforth, Clay blows up office buildings, sets another assassin on fire and destroys teams of contract killers. It’s all in a day’s work for Statham, who gives us the blunt fierceness we desire.
‘Brave Citizen’
Another film centering on a sadistic rich kid is the Korean director Park Jin-pyo’s “Brave Citizen.” In Park’s film, So Si-min (Shin Hye-sun) is a former champion boxer turned teacher who arrives at a high school whose students cower under the reign of the ruthless Han Su-kang (Lee Jun-young). Because Han’s father is the school’s major donor and his mother is a lawyer, he’s allowed to act like evil incarnate. He decides which teachers are hired and fired and even caused one to die by suicide. The former boxer decides to wear a cat mask and begins targeting Han.
You wouldn’t think you’d take pleasure in a high school student taking roundhouse kicks and swift punches to the jaw, but Han’s depravity makes So’s attacks the purest possible schadenfreude. By the time we arrive at a school-sponsored death match in a boxing ring, you’re praying for this teen to get his comeuppance.
‘In the Land of Saints and Sinners’
In the director Robert Lorenz’s “In the Land of Saints and Sinners” Liam Neeson plays Finbar Murphy, a former contract killer in Northern Ireland who’s tired of death. Similar to Clint Eastwood in “Unforgiven,” Finbar retires to a quiet town where he hopes to tend to a garden and forget his deadly past. When a fugitive Irish Republican Army bomber hiding out in town begins abusing a young girl, however, Finbar kills him. This causes Doireann (Kerry Condon), the fighter’s vindictive comrade, to seek vengeance.
Though set in a coastal town, Lorenz’s film possesses all the hallmarks of a classic Western: the steady lawman (Ciarán Hinds), the helpful neighbor (Niamh Cusack), the outlaw friend (Colm Meaney), and the quick-trigger gunslinger (Jack Gleeson). Add together a brooding, harmonica-infused score, vicious bomb threats and Neeson’s ruminative desire to simply live in peace, and you’ve got an affectingly moody retooling of the conscientious killer narrative.
‘Mad Cats’
A slacker, Taka (Sho Mineo) hasn’t left his trailer since his brother Mune (So Yamanaka), an archaeologist, disappeared. The arrival of an orange cassette in the mail, however, jolts Taka into action. The recording tells him a cat cult is holding his brother hostage, and he needs to recover an ancient Egyptian box of Bastet’s forbidden catnip to save him. During Taka’s slow bicycle journey, he enlists an unhoused man named Takezo (Yuya Matsuura) and the deadly Ayane (played by the stuntwoman Ayane) to help him.
The writer and director Reiki Tsuno’s “Mad Cats” is a silly B-movie lark, featuring two heroes who are absolutely useless. Despite Ayane’s best effort to train Taka and Takezo, neither man can fight or shoot a gun. It’s up to Ayane to defend this hapless pair against catlike assassins in acrobatic firefights and nimble tussles whose punches are edited to sound like soft feline pawing in a film that’s cute, fuzzy and gleefully violent.
‘The Roundup: Punishment’
The fourth film in the Korean detective series starring Ma Dong-seok, known as Don Lee, is just as bruising and off-the-cuff as its predecessors. In “The Roundup: Punishment,” directed by Heo Myeong-haeng, Lee’s Lieutenant Ma Seok-do wants to deliver on a deathbed promise made to a mother whose son was killed by Baek Chang-gi (Kim Mu-yeol), a killer hired by the online gambling leader Jang Dong-cheol (Lee Dong-hwi).
While Ma’s latest investigation has a tech edge, using young specialists to gather clues, he doesn’t abandon his old-school methods. When Ma needs to fund his probe, he shakes down mobsters for cash. In a bit recalling “Lethal Weapon 4,” he uses a fake badge to deputize a petty criminal. Most of all, he delivers big punches. Ma’s brawl with Baek on a plane features a running knee slam that lands so hard, it feels like a brick to your jaw.
