STARRING: TARAJI P. HENSON, JAHI WINSTON, BILLY BROWN, DANNY GLOVER
DIRECTED BY: BABAK JAJAFI
RELEASE DATE: JANUARY 12, 2018
Proud Mary allows audiences to see Taraji P. Henson step away from her usual comedic roles and watch her show off her acting chops as she plays a hardcore killer. Mary, a professional hit woman for Benny’s (Danny Glover) organized crime family located in Boston, realizes her life has more value after a professional hit goes wrong.
The film opens with Mary (Taraji P. Henson) going on a hit. She enters the home and kills the target swiftly and quietly. Before leaving the apartment, she checks in one of the bedrooms and sees the son of the individual she just killed. Feeling guilty, Mary grabs a framed photo of the little boy from a coffee table and abruptly exits the crime scene. The film fast forwards to a year later and the young man named Danny (Jahi Winston) is now a drug dealer for Uncle (Xander Berkeley), another big time organized crime leader and drug dealer. Mary, still conflicted by what she had done to the boy a year prior, spots him one day and starts to follow him. The same day she spots him, he’s beaten badly and passes out in an alley. Danny awakes in the home of Mary. Not sure of his surroundings, Mary introduces herself and gives him some breakfast. Before leaving to “handle some business” (kill Uncle), Mary gives Danny him a disclaimer, “Help yourself to anything in the fridge, but don’t go in my room.” Now we all know when you tell a child not to do something they do the exact opposite. Danny goes into Mary’s room and finds all of her weapons. As the film continues, Mary and Danny begin to form a bond where he trusts her. One of the more poignant parts of the movie is when they go to a spot where Danny goes to clear his mind and reveals he started working for Uncle a year after his father was murdered and he couldn’t find a stable family environment.
As luck would have it, Danny finds out that Mary is indeed a hit woman after she comes back from a professional hit with fellow assassin Tom (Billy Brown) with a gunshot wound. Danny goes to Benny’s house to convince him to release Mary from her assassin’s contract but little did he know that things were about to change for him in ways that he could never imagine. Proud Mary proves Henson has more than enough attitude and charisma to carry an action movie, just not this one. On opening weekend, the film earned $9.9 million and thus far has accumulated only $16 million worldwide from a $14 million budget.
Proud Mary receives 7.5 stars out of 10 stars.