Taraji P. Henson stars in, and is an executive producer of, Proud Mary, an action film led by an African-American woman gunslinger. Three great reasons to support the film! Unfortunately, the film itself is not.
I did not have super high expectations for the film. I usually don't for action films, because the point is to give the audience action, not necessarily a strong storyline. However, decent action films will give you some strategic thinking by the protagonist or some type of twist, enough to keep my interest. Furthermore, in 2018, I expect the action to be exciting and thrilling.
What we get here has none of that. Mary doesn't seem to have any thinking skills when it comes to what we are to believe she does for a living. Her answer is always to put a bullet in someone's head, which by the way makes for pretty boring action scenes. In fact, this one go-to problem resolution is what gets Mary in trouble in the first place, and she just shoots more people until the problem is solved. This makes it hard to care about her character, and her taking in the young boy she made an orphan a year before doesn't compensate for it.
It is clear the film wants you to feel this emotional tie to Mary and Mary's relationship with Danny (Jahi Di'Allo Winston), but the writing just doesn't allow it to form no matter how much the film tries to push it on the audience. There's no amount of tears, music, and slow motion that can help a poorly written film make the audience emotionally invested in the characters.
Furthermore, in spite of the many branches of storyline, the plot was just way too simplistic (going back to the answer always being Mary shooting someone, and not even in creative ways). There's the storyline of Mary's previous relationship with Tom (Billy Brown), and the storyline of Tom's father, Benny (Danny Glover), taking Mary in off the street as a teenager and bringing her into the business. But the story never goes deep enough to make us invested in those relationships or revealing more of the background of those relationships and how they've reached the point where they are at. The best part of the storyline with Tom and Benny is seeing Margaret Avery playing Benny's wife, Mina. Yes, the highlight of the film was a moment of, "O look, it's like Mister finally got to marry Shug!" (that's a The Color Purple reference).
I'm thankful for the short runtime, not that there was probably much more to show with such a limited storyline. This was way more disappointing than I expected. I'll have higher hopes for Acrimony.
5/10