IslandGuru
Who payed the critics
Clarissa Mora
The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.
Lidia Draper
Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.
BlackWind-2001
So... I just bought this movie... oh well, I guess I can't pick winners everytime.
#shouldhaveclickedtherentbuttonI'm pretty sure this movie just ruined Tina Turner's version of Proud mary for me. Action sequences, story and editing, bad. (I think they should have used that out of tune flute song from Titanic instead, it would have been more fitting).This is one of them times where the people making the trailer did a good job and lured me in...
garygwilliams
Cookie is even badder in this role a female assassin. Taraji shows how a woman can be as violent as a man an still look good doing it. She gets to show her softer side when she interacts with Danny the orphan she decides to look out for. It is the interaction between Danny and Mary that makes the film. Danny Glover is refreshing as the aging OG who shows he still has the guts to make the hard choices. Glover's son and Mary's ex is a hardened criminal that never quite got over her.
friendful
I have to start by saying this trope is my utter catnip. Leon, Man on Fire, The Man From Nowhere, Safe, heck I even watched Rocky Handsome! If there's a dangerous killer with a PAST protecting a kid I will watch. What I'm saying is that I was definitely the target audience for this movie.
When I saw the initial teaser I was excited because Henson is a fave and action movies are a fave, so yay! Then I saw the blurb and be still my heart, catnip. I was so disappointed that it didn't show in my city for some reason. I checked regularly and it still makes no sense to me that we never got it as it showed in podunk but not a metro area. But FINALLY I got to see it and it was better than I expected. It's very easy to mess a trope like this up (I'm looking at you "Security"), so I appreciated that it wasn't afraid to slow the pace and have those quiet moments that show us the emotional connections involved.
That said, it had its flaws. We were supposed to feel the Mary's emotional connection with certain characters, but the filmmaker made the unfortunate decision to do more telling than showing. I understand time constraints but if you're going to choose to approach this trope in this manner... you need to provide that screen time. I actually think most of the flaws would have been avoided if that one issue had been fixed. They all kind of flow from it, directly or indirectly. If it weren't for that (sadly common) mistake this could have easily received full stars from me.
It's probably going to go on the catnip rewatch list, but I'd be careful who I recommended it to because not everyone has the devotion to this trope that I do. My mom? Not so much. My step-mum? Probably. My siblings? My dad? My step-dad? My auntie? Definitely.
phanthinga
There no twist and turn in Proud Mary can make me raise my eyebrows anymore so with this kind of movie it all come down to how good the acting and the action scene.I don't know any of the cast beside Danny Glover but he not the only one with good performance cause despite how cliche the movie is the bonding between Taraji P. Henson as Mary and Jahi Di'Allo Winston make me care for them enough to get through all the boring gang related talks.
