If you were concerned there wouldn’t be enough unsubtle apiculture metaphors for meting out justice via hellacious ass-whooping in The Beekeeper, you can relax. Even if director David Ayer remains in his usual mode of glowering self-seriousness, whenever Jason Statham snarls about “protecting the hive” or “smoking out the hornets” or “killing the queen,” you get an inkling of how much fun this violent revenge thriller might have been in more playful hands. Still, watching the bullet-headed action star take down squads of government agents and thuggish mercenaries alike, mostly while unarmed, is fun enough. Probably even more so in Imax.

In a screenplay by Kurt Wimmer that’s nothing if not literal, Statham plays Adam Clay, a retired field operative from a top-secret national security force designed to step in and restore order whenever some nefarious criminal situation gets out of hand. Even though he’s no longer a “Beekeeper,...