Proud Mary was buried because it’s simply not a very good movie. Proud Mary wasn’t buried because it featured a black woman as the lead. And much as I hate to say it, Film Twitter missed the mark on this one. I was all in for this one - I love Henson, the trailer looked fun, and the soundtrack sounded killer. But I had to take the chance to see it, and see it I did, in a theater with three other people last night. Which led to the aforementioned speculation that Henson couldn’t carry a film, much less an action film. The film was buried in the cinematic graveyard that is January, there were no critic screenings, and it seemed mostly forgotten. It had a cracking trailer a few months back, but then… silence. It co-stars some respectable talent - Danny Glover as her boss/mentor/father figure, Xander Berkeley as a creepy Russian drug lord, even Neal McDonough pops up for a bit. The film stars Henson as the right fist of a Boston crime boss, responsible for cleaning up messes and killing enemies, until she stumbles across a young boy (Jahi Di’Allo Winston) who gives her new purpose, even as a war breaks out between the local crime families. It was particularly interesting because the film is also directed by Iranian Babak Najafi, adding an interesting angle to its cultural pedigree. Henson, who recently wowed critics and audiences with her performance in the much-lauded Hidden Figures. This was disappointing for a number of reasons, most predominately because the working theory was that Screen Gems didn’t feel that an action film starring a black woman would succeed. It was nowhere to be found in most other major cities. I saw it last night in Boston, but that’s likely because it was filmed in and takes place in Boston. It has a supposed release date of today, but it’s barely showing in a lot of theaters. There’s been a quiet uproar over Proud Mary in the film critic community, particularly in what we call “Film Twitter” - that is to say, the online presence that film critics maintain on Twitter.
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