Proud Mary
       
Director: Babak Najafi
Year: 2018
Rating: 6.0
If this had been made fifty-years ago, it would have starred Pam Grier and to signal its Blaxploitation roots, the song Papa Was a Rollin' Stone from the Temptations plays over the opening credits. It is not Pam Grier but it is Taraji P. Henson stepping into her high heels for some necessary killing. Henson who has been in The Color Purple and Hidden Figures doesn't have Grier's sex appeal but then few do - but she is a fine actress.  A cameo from Grier in this would have been welcome.

 

It is the evening and Mary (Henson) is getting ready to go out. Some light make-up, suitable clothes in black, her closet is filled with different colored wigs, she picks blond because they have more fun and she opens a drawer full of armaments that could supply a small war. She removes a silencer. She is not the Avon Lady - she is a hitwoman working for Benny (Danny Glover) and she is very good at her job. Her target is a bookie who has had sticky fingers - she shoots out the lock, opens the door to his apartment, he is on the phone and a second later he is dead. Easy job. Then Mary hears a sound - the man's son is playing video games in another room unaware of what is going on - she looks at him and walks away taking his photo with her.  But she doesn't walk away from the boy's life. As she says later "I fucked up".

 

A year passes and she has kept track of the boy. Guilt has seeped into her consciousness. The boy has not had it easy and has ended up as a drug runner for a low-level boss affiliated with the Russian mob. She finds the boy unconscious on the street and takes him in and goes to his boss to buy him out. He tells her to come back in ten years. She kills him and his compatriots. It is a clean hit. No one knows but it triggers a mob war and all hell breaks out. The bloody finale is played out to Tina Turner singing Proud Mary. This has been compared to Gloria though the plots are quite different other than protecting a young boy. Decent hit woman film with a few decent action scenes - she even does a few Chow Yun-fat moves. But in general. it has received a thumbs down from the general public. When it comes to female action films, I am almost always more lenient.