Proud Mary

An assassin for a Boston crime family (Taraji P. Henson) takes a guilty interest in an adolescent boy (Jahi Di’Allo Winston) orphaned when she killed his bookie father—and her concern leads to an all-out gang war between her boss (Danny Glover) and a rival Russian mobster (Rade Serbedzija). John Stewart Newman, Christian Swegal and Steve Antin’s script is bare-bones predictable and never speaks when shooting will do. What keeps the movie afloat is Henson’s remarkable star power—she has the ability to be tender-hearted and steely-eyed almost in the same breath. Young Winston’s performance is similarly textured by turns truculent and vulnerable; he may be one to watch. Director Babak Najafi gives a reasonable facsimile of the gritty atmosphere of the so-called “blaxploitation” pictures of the 1970s.