Review: Proud Mary

Proud Mary (2018) - Babak Jahafi

       January is historically known as a dumping ground for movies. Studios aren't exactly putting their best foot forward, and it makes sense. It's cold outside, everyone just spent seventeen hundred dollars on Christmas presents for everyone in your family and all your friends and literally everyone person you've ever met, and people don't exactly wanna go racing out to the theatres. So the studios lob out the shit they think people don't want to see anyway, and leave the warmer months for the bigger flicks. Things, however, are starting to shift a little bit. Blockbusters are being released earlier and earlier in the year. Two years ago we got Deadpool in February, and this year we have Black Panther coming out early as well; things could potentially be changing as far as how we view January releases. And then I saw Proud Mary and I decided, "Nope. It's shit. January is still all shit." And then I took a shit. All in all not a terrible day.
       Proud Mary tells the story of mafia enforcer (and also world-class assassin I guess) Mary (Taraji P. Henson, who let me say right off the bat, is annoyingly wasted in this movie), who is...proud? Nah, I mean, she's a strong and take-no nonsense woman working in the underground crime world of Boston, and that's where the movie starts. On a job taking out a bookie who owed a lot of money she finds out she accidentally wasted the guy while his son was in the other room playing video games. She lets a few guilty tears out, steals a photo of Danny from the mantel place (because sure) and splits. Cut to a year later, and Danny is now living in a Dickensian nightmare, selling drugs for a prick named Uncle who regularly beats the fuck out of him, while Mary (who is proud, remember) watches over him. Like a lot. Like all the time. She has to be missing so much work to do this.

       What was advertised as an Action/Thriller ends up being a weird mixture of a crime story, Lifetime-Channel-like-movie-of-the-week domestic drama, and only barely occasionally any kind of action flick. I so wanted this movie to just be fun. It could have absolutely been stupid as shit as long as it was still kind of fun. Henson does her best to be the emotional yet badass lead of the movie, but the terrible writing and weak (and barely existing) action sequences prevents that from ever happening. And Jahi Di'Allo Winston isn't awful as Danny, and the two have a decent rapport and certain points...but...good God everything that comes out of their mouths is garbled non-human nonsense.
       The whole movie, in fact, suffers from the Everyone Is Stupid Problem (EIS Problem, as some scientists have coined it. Real scientists. With medals and shit). When the kid first wakes up at Mary's house she makes him breakfast and insists at least three times that he eat, and then the moment he takes a bite she tells him to, "Slow on, down, son!" So which is it? Should he eat or not? And then after that one bite she's like, "Okay let's go clean your cut." Why can't he eat first? What are your priorities, Mary? But then the worst part is she decides to go confront (and possibly kill, considering she packed a gun) Uncle, who she knows because they are both in crime families. The kid is like, "I'm coming with you!" And she's like, "Okay but you're staying in the car!" Why the FUCK would you have the kid come with you for this sort of encounter? Yes, this may seem like a small thing to write about in so much goddamn detail, but this basic lack of human understanding and logic seriously distresses me. All these people are stupid.

       The rest of the movie focuses on Mary's crime family, led by Danny Glover, who I now fear suffered a stroke shortly before filming the movie. Once again the writing is completely wooden and non-humany, but unless he was trying to create a character who had always just woken up from a nap, I'm afraid he's not well. There's a relationship with Glover's son, Tom (Billy Brown), but that ends up meaning absolutely nothing either. They're all just plot points in a rote idea of a movie.

       But the biggest problem with all of this, is it's ALL MARY'S FAULT. Everything that happens in the movie is because of Mary's rash decision making, and it ends up starting a war that kills dozens of people (sure, most of them are faceless immigrants or minorities so who cares right), but she never has to, like, fuckin' apologize for it. She just does it, gets to kill whoever she wants, and walk away scot-free (spoiler alert but who fuckin' cares) because the movie is named after her.
       And I can overlook a lot of that if the movie had some good action set-pieces or was actually "thrilling" at all, but it wasn't. The few action sequences were bizarrely shot with every person taking a bullet being sped up so they fell down twice as quick. They do this throughout the whole movie and it's really off-putting. There's one arguably alright gun fight at the end but it's so dark and hazily shot all I can focus on is the really loud soundtrack playing "Proud Mary." Get it? The song? And it's also the name of the movie? Yeah.

Why are mafia hitmen in BOSTON dressing like The Black Widow?

       The movie obviously wants us to think of the hitwoman with the heart of gold who saves the day and makes everything okay, a modern day Pam Grier shooting people to funk music but with a more maternal instinct. But instead we get weird performances and a movie that's far too lazy to question any of its characters morals or even logical decision making. Of course we need to have more movies that star women of color, but let's make it a worthy, good move. Let her be proud sure, but also let her be fucking fun too, or at least entertaining to watch. Let's have a sequel where the kid has also become an asshole assassin who murders entire families while they fall down in fast forward.
       Unrelated but my throat's dry and I need a glass of water.

Grade: 2 out 5 Murdered Joggers Under a Bridge