Proud Mary has serious star power

Proud Mary doesn’t look like a bad film, but we don’t know for sure because it wasn’t screened in advance for critics.

The action-thriller stars Taraji P. Henson, excellent in 2016’s Hidden Figures, an Oscar nominee for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and a Golden Globe winner last year for TV’s Empire. Proud Mary was directed by Babak Najafi — OK, his last film, London Has Fallen, was pretty dreadful, but he made film-festival waves with his debut feature, the Swedish-language Sebbe in 2010.

And Proud Mary’s poster, with its Afro-collage of images and its curlicued font, recalls Quentin Tarantino’s 1997 neo-blaxploitation film Jackie Brown and, before that, 1974’s Foxy Brown. The throwback is even more apparent in the film’s trailer, a violent reel set to Ike and Tina Turner’s raucous rendition of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Proud Mary from 1971, though the weaponry is decidedly more modern.

But this is January, a time when the major studios seem to feel honour-bound to release some films sight-unseen by critics. Last week it was Insidious: The Last Key, which at press time earned a pretty bad 28 per cent on rottentomatoes.com.

But this is where the notscreened-in-advance train stops. Even the unanticipated but contractually necessary third instalment of Maze Runner is unspooling for reviewers ahead of its Jan. 26 opening.