By Emilio Frenk.
Director: Babak Najafi
Cast: Taraji P. Henson, Billy Brown, Jahi D´Allo Winston, Neal McDonough,, Margaret Avery, Xander Berkeley, Rade Serbedzija, Erik LaRay Harvey, Owen Burke and Danny Glover.
Rating: Poor
Babak Najafi, director of “London Has Fallen” brings “Proud Mary”, an action movie that failed and badly.
The movie centers in Mary (Taraji P. Henson) a professional assassin from Boston who´s life changes when a professional hit goes wrong and meets Danny (Jahi Di´Allo Winston), who he left orphan during the job.
Later in the film we see a Mary filled with guilt, who crosses paths with Dann and taker him under her wing.
The problem will grow bigger when Mary performs an unauthorized hit; eventually both her and Danny will be on the run and will become also targets of Mary´s boss Benny (Danny Glover) and his son Tom (Billy Brown).
“Proud Mary” is a movie that I consider that had very good potential but the problem was in terms of story.
The screenplay by John S. Newman, Christian Swegal and Steve Antin didn´t made sense at all. The time lapsing between scenes was totally unconvincing and the plot itself was very careless.
In movies like “Atomic Blonde” and “John Wick” what made them special, entertaining and good films was the fact that writers invest a lot on story and created characters that we absolutely relate to.
Here I didn´t see that and I felt that it was a bad carbon copy of the movies that I previously mentioned.
I liked the opening of the film and that visual look between 70´s and 80´s style but then afterwards the movie goes downhill.
I felt that Barbak Najafi invest to much on the looks of the film and he left on the side the story part; this has been a major issue with filmmakers who make this kind of movies and they keep failing constantly because they want to make their films with nice imagery.
The relationship between Taraji P. Henson and Jahi D´Allo Winston didn´t work and I was never connected into the film.
I admit that the film has good action sequences and literally that is pretty much it. From a story point the film fails and badly.
Taraji P. Henson in the film tries to put her best effort and she tries to make her character likeable, so as Danny Glover and Billly Brown with their respective ones. The problem is that no matter how hard you try, the cast won´t save your film if a bad screenplay is involved.
I see in Babak Najafi a filmmaker that he has talent but a lot to learn since in most of this films has been making the same mistakes over and over again. He wants to make films with good imagery but I feel that he needs to focus in story.
“Proud Mary” is one big disappointment in the action genre and I cannot recommend it for any reason.