Proud Mary starring Taraji P. Henson

Some reviews are positive. Others are negative, like Ira Madison's review here, but there's very few reviews because of how little Sony has allowed.

So, any guesses as to why they'd be burying this? Other than, ya know...it being a movie starring a woman of color and Sony being run by incompetent idiots.

It sucks ?

I mean, plenty of crappy movies get WAY more support than this. Surely they want to make money?

I saw more promotion for fuckin' Mortdecai than I saw for this movie and they were both January dump month films. I mean I'm certainly not gonna say that I think the film might be good but since when have movie studios held back on promotion for awful movies? Especially to this extent?

EDIT: So after reading the article Tuckerscreator posted, it sounds like they did some heavy false advertising on the promotion for the movie. Yeesh. Henson deserved better.

edited 12th Jan '18 10:50:13 PM by AdricDePsycho

Saw it last night. Don't have time to write an actual review or anything, but basically "has some problems but I liked it." Doesn't really warrant Sony burying it, seeing we have yet another kind-of-dull Liam Neeson action film out this weekend and those always get halfway decent advertising. And this is the studio that inflicted The Emoji Movie on us and gave it plenty of room to be a success.

I can't help but wonder if Sony rushed the film production as well, because the film does have noticeable pacing and editing issues. ^note  For example, there's a quiet conversation between several people that cuts back and forth between the character's faces so quickly it made me dizzy, and felt amateurish besides. Plus, I couldn't follow the actual conversation because all I could think of during the scene was "why would you do this?" As for pacing, the opening scenes are way too short, and could have covered a few plot points that have to instead be explained through dialog later. Henson's great though, and her and Jahi Di'Allo Winston have a really good dynamic. The film also leans towards a toxic masculinity critique at times, which I'm always here for. It's the sort of movie that I think could have been improved a lot through some minor changes, I guess?

While Proud Mary itself doesn't always balance 'fun throwback action movie' and 'family drama' as well as it could I don't see how the misleading trailers can really be blamed on the actual filmmakers, and I feel like the second review is disingenuous in that respect. In general I'm not a huge fan of "this wasn't what I expected or was here to see, so it is not a good movie" in film reviews (hello The Last Jedi), but Madison also addresses the broader context behind some of his problems with the film, and I do see his point. Joi Childs' review from the first page is a good overview of what the movie does well, and I hope the movie does a little better at the box office than we're all expecting it to at this point.

Any film that is presenting itself as primarily an action film is going to end up getting compared to John Wick, and I don't feel this is exactly fair either, not everyone is trying to make that movie. As good as John Wick was, I don't need to see another five thousand movies exactly like it.

...Well, that was a lot longer that I thought it was going to be.

edited 13th Jan '18 6:03:32 AM by Pseudopartition

Really, are people genuinely thinking that a production company, whose goal is to make money, would be trying to tank itself by making sure people aren't going to a movie they produced? That's some grade-A conspiracy BS right there.

The truth is probably considerably simpler: it wasn't screened for critics for the same reason tons of movies aren't. Because it sucks, and poor reviews would hurt its box office. As for the lack of marketing: I've heard just as many people online claiming that they HAD seen some marketing, so it just seems to me that it's getting the same amount of marketing as many other January movies that studios shit out in theaters.

Just got back from the movie and personally, I didn't like it. It suffered from a lot of bland characters lack of depth. I felt the use of 60s and 70s pop didn't amount to much (Only about 3-4 songs), the rest of the soundtrack is generic action movie stuff. The family drama, while not a problem being in there (The Godfather is technically a family drama when you get down to the details.) doesn't work to me because it didn't spend enough time developing the relationship between it's two leads, and I counted only 3 parts that could have been called action set pieces like other films of its kind. Also the action feels like it was just messily edited but that's just my two cents.

Side note: Only saw a trailer once for this and assuming it was gonna be more of a campy style saw it out of curiosity. Didn't feel campy at all, and I think it took it self far to seriously based on advertising material's style (Particularly things such as the font and coloration used for the opening credits)