Proud Mary (2018)
Directed by Babak Najafi
Written by John S. Newman, Christian Swegel, Steve Antin
Starring Taraji P. Henson, Billy Brown, Danny Glover
Release Date January 12th, 2018
Proud Mary has the ambition and the movie star to become a franchise. The question it leaves behind, however, is whether or not the people behind it have the talent and investment to make it something more than just a stock action movie. For my money, other than star Taraji P. Henson, Proud Mary comes up quite short. Other than the star, there is nothing memorable or particularly special about Proud Mary.
Mary (Henson) is a professional killer and when we meet her, she’s hard at work. Sneaking her way into a high rise apartment in Boston, Mary dispatches her target with little effort. Unfortunately, she finds that her target has a son, Danny (Jahi Di’Allo Winston), who was home when she dispatched the target. Protocol would call for her to kill the kid but Mary has a code and when the kid doesn’t spot her, she slips away.
Cut to one year later, Mary has been tracking Danny, driven by her guilt. Danny’s life has gone from Boston high rise to living on the street and working for a low level Russian drug dealer named Uncle (Xander Berkley). When Mary decides to rescue Danny, she sets off a war between the Russians and her boss, Benny (Danny Glover). The Russians want revenge and Benny doesn’t know that it was his top killer who set off the war, only that everyone is now trying to kill everyone else. The plot turns on whether the kid will be Mary’s downfall by revealing her accidental betrayal.
The plot sounds a lot more active and engaged than Proud Mary actually is. The reality is that Proud Mary is rather dull. There are two signature action scenes in the movie and both are hampered by the cliché of faceless villains who can’t shoot straight. Only Mary and her former partner, Benny’s son Tom, played by Billy Brown, are allowed to hit things they aim at.
Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal.
