If we’re honest with ourselves, we owe money to Taraji P. Henson. Ask yourself how much money you have paid her in exchange for years of entertainment. Empire is on broadcast TV, but when I watch it, I see it on Hulu. I borrowed her memoir from the library. I only paid to see Hidden Figures. So I owe her, and I like women kicking ass so there was no way that I was not going to see Proud Mary opening weekend.
At this point, the lack of promotion and difficulty in seeing the movie has become part of everyone’s viewing experience. The only Thursday night showings were in a couple of suburbs, not major cities like Boston or Cambridge. I planned to see it at a local Cambridge multiplex theater on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but the specific theater that was showing it was flooded so the showings were cancelled. The Commuter and other movies were still available. Sure. OK. I hopped on the T and saw it in Boston instead. I was not going to be deterred by a little flood or brief ice storms.
Proud Mary suffers from several major problems. There is The Dark Tower Problem. I came for Idris Elba or at least Matthew McConaughey, but instead the kid is the main character. I would watch Taraji butter and eat toast while reading a grocery list. Why is this child the main character? I don’t need a child as an entry point to a strange violent underground world. May I introduce you to John Wick? I also hate when movies try to humanize women assassins by giving them children or some sort of chick issue to care about. I can empathize with a stone cold, selfish female killer. I’m taking to you, Aeon Flux and Underworld. I’m willing to sign a waiver for Ultraviolet because vampires, entering a fully secure building only with swords and all hail the patron saint of action films, Milla Jovovich. My favorite assassin woman movie is Angel of Death staring international stuntwoman turned actor Zoe Bell. I also think that it hurts to be familiar with the terrain that is featured in the film. When the child was on the T and arrived somewhere that you can only get to by commuter rail, it threw me off a bit. Now I understand why the critics had an issue with Bushwick. It is harder to suspend disbelief if you know the world that the characters occupy.
I am actually willing to sign a waiver for Proud Mary regarding the kid being an integral part of the narrative. Mary’s desire to free the kid parallels her effort to save herself. It sadly seems credible to me that women are willing to put up with abuse until it affects children then women have epiphanies that what they are experiencing is not tolerable. The kid actor did a good job even if the character was a bit of an idiot and needed to follow her instructions. Side note: if someone is at the door, you don’t turn off the tv, and if there are keys in the lock, you hide! What is wrong with you! I was never abused as part of a criminal underground network. I was just a latchkey kid in NYC! You would not have a survived a minute in my lower stakes world! Stay out of her closet of intrigue! Mary, get a lock for your closet of intrigue and wigs!
Proud Mary deserves kudos for making me lust after her apartment and car. I’m not into cars, but her car was gorgeous. I love the title song, but in an era of perfect fight choreography timed to the music in movies like Atomic Blonde, which I didn’t like, and Baby Driver, which I thought was OK, Proud Mary fell short. There was not enough fighting, and if I’m being completely honest, Henson was a little squinty at times when she pulled the trigger. Shout out to the excellent two token white actors of note, the perfect Xander Berkeley, well known for his performances as Gregory in The Walking Dead, as Percy in Nikita and the person occupying The Booth at the End and Neal McDonough, everyone’s favorite villain on Arrow and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. Billy Brown from How to Get Away with Murder felt the same here except with his jerkiness dialed up a notch. Danny Glover is too old for this shit, but blink and you’ll miss Shug!
It is possible that I missed a lot of excellent narrative cues in Proud Mary because I never got into the blaxploitation genre. In a world where Liam Neeson makes basically the same movie every year, and I enjoy it, Proud Mary was not the worst or the best of its kind, but it definitely deserved better for an Oscar nominated actor. Is Taraji the only one working here? Yes.