Mary is an assassin working for a crime family in Boston. One piece of work sees her leaving a young boy orphaned and over the course of the next year a guilt ridden Mary tracks his progress. When she sees him becoming involved in organised crime as a runner she steps in to intervene and in doing so sets off a gang war.
It sounds like a cracking crime thriller doesn't it? Yeah....it's not.
I saw the trailer for this months ago and then it vanished. I was intrigued because it looked like a fun action packed homage to the Blaxploitation films of the 70's and so was curious as to why we weren't hearing anything about it. Then online talk made it seem it the studio had brushed it under the carpet. This was disappointing. Then it got worse when people started mentioning reasons why. Reasons like the studio had lost faith in a film with a black female lead. In a year where Black Panther could make 1.2 billion dollars this was just not on. Then the film was finally, belatedly released and I realised one big reason why we weren't hearing anything about it.
Because it's just bad. It's really crappy.
It's dull as dishwater. Taraji P. Henson as Mary aside it's full of bad acting. Danny Glover as Benny in particular feels like he's reading his dialogue off a cue card held up beside the camera. It's so underwritten no one in the film even gets a second name. No one character has any chemistry with another which has the knock on effect of giving us viewers no reason to give a shit about anyone on screen. The action scenes are boring too. Well the few of them we get. Swathes of nameless, faceless henchmen being mowed down in the most perfunctory manner. 30 year old John Woo films would wee on the action scenes in this from a great height and post John Wick these kind of by the numbers action scenes just don't cut it anymore. This contains nothing we haven't seen done better in other films. It's 85 minutes long and still manages to feel sluggish and boring. How in the name of jaysus is that even possible? And on top of that choppy editing and jarring plotlines give off a feel like a lot of story has been chopped out to make a quicker moving story. Character motivations appear out of nowhere and we are left trying to connect the dots. And don't get me started on the dirgy soul sucking violin music that plays over most of the movie, the final nail in the film's coffin.
It really annoyed me. It's a film I wanted to like and one I wanted to see do well. How often do we get to see action films with women leads? Rarely. How often do we get to see action films with black women leads? Very very rarely. In the last ten years I can think of Colombiana and before that Catwoman maybe and then .........Pam Grier thrillers in the 1970's? This feels like such a wasted opportunity. This above poster and the trailer give off a 70's vibe that never materialises apart from in the opening minute. It's all such a lifeless generic affair. It's the kind of story you'll struggle to remember an hour after you see it.
The always reliable Henson tries her best but can't spark any bit of fun into proceedings. It's a shame because she does look pretty convincing at the physical side of the role. One 5 minute scene played out to the sounds of the title song near the end works but it's too little too late and retroactively makes the rest of the film ever worse by comparison. Did no one involved in the film look at this scene and realise that maybe, just maybe the rest of the film could use a little of the fire shown here?
Don't bother going to this. It's a big disappointment.
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