PROUD MARY

From the opening credits, Proud Mary made no secret about

Blaxploitation movies of the 70s like Cleopatra Jones and Foxy Brown being its
inspiration.

But that Inspiration didn't last more than the duration of the opening credits
spliced with a montage of its titular protagonist going through the motions of
prepping for a hit job.

Hit job done and dusted, fast forward to one year later; there’s no trace of the
Blaxploitation inspiration. Instead, we are introduced to an encounter
between Mary Goodwin (Taraji P. Henson) and Danny (Jahi Di’Allo Winston), a
destitute teenage boy passed out in an alley.

The inspiration behind the relationship that ensues between them harks back to
Jean Reno's and a teenage Natalie Portman in Luc Besson’s The Professional. So
essentially, within the span of a few minutes of its opening scenes, Proud Mary
drops its Blaxploitation pretensions and segues into a racially updated and gender-
modified almost-retelling of The Professional.

Its storyline tells us that Mary is resident hitwoman of a Boston Gang headed by
the avuncular Benny (Danny Glover). The Gang’s enforcement unit is headed by
Benny’s hot-head son and Mary’s one-time love interest, Tom (a perfectly cast
Billy Brown given his resemblance to Danny Glover). Danny, it turns out, was
orphaned by Mary when she took out his father in the opening credits hit job.

This is where the movie starts to get a little (actually, make that a lot) confounding.
We find out Mary has been guilt-racked about orphaning Danny and as a sort of
mea culpa, she has been shadowing him in the last year ostensibly to ensure he is
okay. But in that time, video-game-playing-while-his-old-man-was-being-offed
Danny has transitioned into a drug-runner for some Russian mob Boss named
Uncle (Xander Berkeley). So, if Mary has been looking out for Danny, where was
she when he was hooking up with a Russian drug dealer?

There’s more: in one scene where he is making a drop off, Danny shows some
cojones when he pulls a gun on a customer who tried to short-change him. Then he
gets slapped a little by Uncle for stiffing a twenty for breakfast, and tough-kid
Danny buckles up (ostensibly from being slapped around a little by Uncle) after
letting off a shot to scare off a mugger who had robbed him.

Mary shows up in time to pick up the unconscious Danny and takes him to her
posh apartment where he comes to. When he gives her lip, she lets on about the
gun she found in his knapsack when she picked him up unconscious from the alley.
The thing is; the gun could not have been in the knapsack. Danny had collapsed
shortly after firing the gun whilst in pursuit of the mugger who had snatched his
knapsack.

As the movie progresses, Mary and Danny establish a testy relationship that
involves a lot of smart-ass quips and bickering that was suggestive of a relationship
far too deep than their fairly recent liaison could justify. In some scenes, I would
say the bickering was more suggestive of a couple who were once an item than of a
hit woman battling maternal instincts and a stubborn lad resisting maternal control.

Even the action sequences in Proud Mary had their own share of the confounding.
Going by the stunts she pulled in the movie, Mary was not only proud but she was
one bad-ass, infact too bad-ass it almost seemed ridiculous. She was such a good
shot that when the bad guys were behind her, they would miss their shot and she
would spin round and cap them off.

I know in movies, especially action movies; you have to suspend belief but Jesus,
Joseph and Mary! How do you get shot in the abdomen, self-treat your wound and
then engage in death-defying hijinks without an ounce of wince from said injury
whilst capping off bad guys like a bad-ass!

Even more confounding, all those shootings and not a cop to be found anywhere,
and in which America does a black woman expect to drive off into the sunset in a
Maserati pock-marked with bullet holes without cops pulling her over?

For a movie riddled with confounding incongruities and a barely-thought out

storyline, Proud Mary surprisingly had performances that were impressive and
nowhere as bad as the movie itself.

As Benny, Danny Glover, who is usually given to overacting, gave a surprising but
effective restrained performance of an avuncular Gang leader with the you-can-
never-leave-this-family instincts of a female praying mantis right after mating with
its partner.

As Benny’s hot-head son, Tom, Billy Brown was impressive opposite of his old
man’s cool demeanour. As lead enforcer of his father’s gang, he was go-go-go
brash when he needed to be but stopped short of the Sonny Corleone-level of
unthinking brashness.

For her first action movie (albeit one that was more of a letdown) Taraji P. Henson,
as the titular Mary gave an impressive performance. Hers was what really held the
rote lines and the faulty storyline from crumbling. She was believable as a hit
woman with an intense crisis of conscience and maternal instincts and equally as
believable as a cool-cat hit woman with a bad-ass attitude.

Proud Mary does not do Taraji P. Henson proud as an Executive Producer but for
all its disappointments, it gives her credit as a believable action movie star.5/10