Revenge is sweet - and deadly

I want giant exploding dinosaur sharks, I want sharp suits and sharper jawlines, I want implausible plunges from buildings while ending armies of bad guys.

This latest Statham film has all of those things, maybe not the sharks, and yet it also has an element of restraint.

Just one element, mind you, and it relates to the film's violence.

Director David Ayer, of Suicide Squad fame, moves the film at such a cracking pace he doesn't let his cameras linger on the blood and gore Statham leaves in his wake.

Most directors of films like this do, they've paid good money for their makeup and effects teams to create exploding heads or dismembered body parts - it feels more like you're watching a live feed from an abattoir.

Not David Ayer and the film is better for it, though don't think I mean its the kind of Jason Statham film to bring your mum to, it's still got an MA rating.

Statham plays Adam Clay, a quiet apiarist who has rented a barn and some farm land off lonely widow Eloise Parker (Phylicia Rashad) as a home for his beehives and for the equipment he uses to jar their honey.

It's a quiet life for both of them, but the quiet is shattered when Eloise falls for an online scammer and hands them her passwords and banking details, losing her savings and pension.

Dropping in to check up on the old lady, Clay finds himself facing the business end of a gun held by Eloise's FBI agent daughter Verona (Emmy Raver-Lampman). Verona thinks the quiet beekeeper might be responsible for her mother's death, but when they realise that Eloise has taken her own life, Clay goes to work looking for the scammers responsible.

Our first hint the man is more than just a quiet honey farmer comes when he pulls out a satellite phone and has a government operative track down the business address the scammers are working from.

Clay pays this location a visit and burns the office building to the ground. The man has only just begun, determined to work his way through the various shady businesses and holding companies until everyone responsible has paid. With violence on this scale crossing state lines, Agent Verona must lead the investigation to stop him, which of course has her conflicted.

Meanwhile, nervous in their penthouse office is chief scammer scumbag Derek Danforth (Josh Hutcherson) and his head of security Wallace (Jeremy Irons).

What a cast - I haven't even mentioned Minnie Driver and Jemma Redgrave are in here, too - setting up what I can only assume is an ongoing franchise, which I am totally here for.

Kurt Wimmer's screenplay is action heavy and witty banter light, missing the cheeky ripostes you expect Statham to be spitting out, giving him some very wooden "Protect the hive" mantras instead. This character is a stoic man of action, and Statham gives physicality, often implausible physicality.

I've given Ayer cred for showing some restraint when it comes to celebrating the gore, but there is absolutely no restraint when it comes to the semiotics of his bad guys. Ayer has his lighting, art and costume teams design for the cheap seats. Just so there's no chance you might mistake who the bad guys are, they dress in wide lapels or loud Hawaiian shirts, their offices are lit with offensive neon or with halogen lights directly facing the camera causing blinding lens flare, they're played as such gum-chewing wise-asses, that you want to leap into the screen and help Statham as he gives them the smacking of their lives.

Look, you're not paying your money to be educated by a film like this, and you won't be, but you'll enjoy the honey-scented ultra-violence.