'Proud Mary' A Review

Proud Mary is an action movie staring Taraji P. Henson as Mary Goodwin a wearied Boston mob assassin. The film opens on a hit where Mary, after completing it, discovers a boy Danny(Jahi Di'Allo Winston) obviously playing video games in another room. A year later and Mary watches over him from a distance eventually intervening when he is beaten decimating a mid-level Russian mobster and his crew in the process. Chaos ensues with Mary only wanting to safely exit The Life with Danny in toe.

Henson is a star, plain and simple, any time she's on screen in any story she happens to be in she is charming, compelling, and magnetic. This story is relatively pedestrian but Henson breathes enough into the tired beats to make it entertaining. The rest of the cast does well but only Billy Brown seems to really lean into the genre and only Xander Berkeley, in a brief cameo demonstrates any real menace. Certainly the script doesn't give the actors much to work with but a little more performative relish might have carried the film a bit further than the relatively straight-on performances the majority of the cast delivers.

The cinematography and score are serviceable but unremarkable. The action especially the climactic sequence at the end are high energy and fun, doubly so with Henson in the middle of them. Since the ten years since 2008's Taken versions of this story have been virtually done to death however it is refreshing to have Henson as the lead as opposed to a parade of aging white men, this virtue transcends the plots predictability.

Rent It.