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THE BEEKEEPER (out now on Netflix) \u2013 2 stars.<\/strong><\/p>\n The buzz emanating from David Ayer\u2019s brutal revenge thriller starring Jason Statham as a retired assassin who tends beehives in the rolling green hills of Springfield, Massachusetts, is merely ho-hum.<\/p>\n The rickety plot is set in motion by a malware pop-up phishing scam that drives a retired teacher (Phylicia Rashad) to commit suicide after her life savings and pension fund are cruelly plundered. Enigmatic neighbour Adam Clay (Statham) vows revenge.<\/p>\n He is a former member of a government-sanctioned kill squad codenamed the Beekeepers. They \u201cprotect the hive\u201d from threats to national security and Clay intends to forcefully neutralise obnoxious self-made millionaire Derek Danforth (Josh Hutcherson), whose company mines personal data to identify elderly victims.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Cue thrilling fight sequences, which draw heavily on Statham\u2019s extensive martial arts training.<\/p>\n When the Derbyshire-born hard man communicates with fists and feet, Ayer\u2019s picture is curiously compelling. Unfortunately, Statham\u2019s avenging angel repeatedly sermonises about the scourge of heartless online predators.<\/p>\n The script forgives his questionable American twang during an early exchange with the teacher\u2019s grief-stricken daughter, played by Emmy Raver-Lampman.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s some British Isles hiding in your accent,\u201d she observes. Genuine emotion is much harder to find.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Boys in the Boat (out now in cinemas) \u2013 3 stars<\/strong><\/p>\n They do make \u2019em like they used to. At least George Clooney does, comfortably nestled behind the camera for an unabashedly old-fashioned story of real-life sporting underdogs, who triumphed against overwhelming odds in Depression-era Washington DC to row for glory at the 1936 Summer Olympic Games in Berlin.<\/p>\n London-born model and actor Callum Turner sports a mop of blond hair in the second seat of the University of Washington\u2019s junior boat, conveniently distinguishing him from sweat-slathered co-stars during an obligatory training montage that moulds inexperienced dreamers into a finely tuned brotherhood of giant slayers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Brisk editing energises the race sequences while screenwriter Mark L Smith mimics a cox at the stern, maintaining a steady rate of knots with touching scenes of self-empowerment, diluted romance and heavy-handed class warfare.<\/p>\n Frustratingly, the thinly written female characters exist solely to support the men\u2019s ambitions and cheer proudly from the sidelines.<\/p>\n Composer Alexandre Desplat\u2019s twinkly piano-led score complements chocolate box images of perfectly synchronised oars scything through rippling water bathed in sunlight. Clooney hits each predictable emotional beat and builds to a crowd-pleasing finale that teases the possibility of Team USA\u2019s scrappy upstarts humiliating German Chancellor Adolf Hitler (Daniel Philpott) on a global stage.<\/p>\n One small battle against fascism before a devastating war.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n[ad_2]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [ad_1] THE BEEKEEPER (out now on Netflix) \u2013 2 stars. The buzz emanating from David Ayer\u2019s brutal revenge thriller starring Jason Statham as a retired assassin who tends beehives in the rolling green hills of Springfield, Massachusetts, is merely ho-hum. The rickety plot is set in motion by a malware pop-up phishing scam that drives …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20776,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[765],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20775"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}