By Ruth Ferguson, NDG Editor
Proud Mary starring Taraji P. Henson burst on the scene with a dynamic trailer. It looks like 2018 is going to start off with an exciting action flick with a different twist, a female hired gun. While it is true this is not a bad film, there is a reason it is released in January which is considered the burial ground of movie release dates. There is plenty of action, but not enough depth to truly care about the character’s plight.
On a routine kill assignment, if there is any such thing, Mary (Henson) knocks off a man we never even get a clear look at before she discovers his young son. Thanks to headphones and is squarely focused on the video game he is playing, the young boy does not even realize his life has suddenly changed forever. We watch Mary take the young boys photo from a frame. Then suddenly it is a year later and it appears Danny (played by Jahi Di’Allo Winston) has fallen into a life of crime himself and when he needs rescuing Mary just happens to arrive on the scene.
Mary is not a gun for hire to highest bidder she works for Benny (Danny Glover) who is the head of one of the two biggest crime families in Boston. I am guessing the director or producer is a fan of the Color Purple and was tickled at the chance to reunite Shug (Margaret Avery) and Mister. In Proud Mary Avery plays Glover’s wife Mina, who we meet for a minute at her birthday party eating red velvet cake. Benny leaves much of the day-to-day operations of the family business to his son Tom played by one of the best visual assets of the movie, Billy Brown (just ask Viola Davis as he was her lover for a while on How to Get Away with Murder).
The challenge with Proud Mary is it generates more questions then it ever answers for viewers. In a city the size of Boston, how believable is it she is going to find the little boy a year later at the moment he needs help the most? I get that his dad was not Father of the Year material, but you just want to ride off into the sunset with the woman that just admitted she killed your daddy? The guy who was robbed one day in a drug deal gone bad just happens to be working in the alley in of a totally different crime family – they co-share drug dealers these days? There are others, let’s just say when they cut this film down to 89 minutes, it was a brutal chop job and the story suffers as a result.
Henson has been vocal about her concerns that Screen Gems, the film studio, did not provide any support for this movie. She is right there were no advance screenings for critics and the fact they released it in January is a sign they had little faith in its potential success. It appears they were not wrong with a dismal opening weekend box office of an estimated $3 million. Whether is the fault of the studio, the director, the story, the editing job or the performance is unclear. I lean in the direction of the filmmaker and editing of the film. But you can be the judge at a local theater near you, this week, but likely available on DVD or your favorite streaming system sooner than they expected.
Proud Mary is rated R for violence.
