Jamie chases after Truth who ran away after revealing that she suffers from Statham’s Disease. They run all the way to the top of the Space Needle and Jamie shouts “Please, don’t do it!” But it’s too late, Truth jumps, only to deploy a base-jumping parachute and land safely at the bottom. They continue this mad dash about town as Truth attempts to keep her adrenaline up and stay alive. “Stop please, there are other ways to keep your adrenaline up,” Jamie pants. “I tried,” Truth responds, “it’s why we were thieves. But you can’t be with a thief. So I have to find another way,” and with that she jumps the Grand Canyon on a rocket skateboard. Just when Truth looks to bungee jump from the Gateway Arch, Jamie is able to grab her, “Look into my eyes. There are other ways to keep your adrenaline up.” She does. She looks deep into Jamie’s eyes and with that they spend the rest of the summer making out so hard (perhaps more? It’s implied) that Truth’s adrenaline never falters. As the summer comes to the close, Jamie falls asleep on the beach after a particularly hard make-out sesh only to awaken to find Truth near death. “I… I just didn’t want to wake you. You looked so peaceful.” Tears are streaming down Jamie’s face. “ Please, do one thing for me,” Truth coughs, “That dog you saved with the cut ear? It wasn’t Arf Collector Von Schnauzer. You have to save the real Arf Collector… he’s working for our boss, Briggs,” and with that Truth dies. Jamie and Patrick donate a small part of their considerable Bad Movie Twins fortune to find a cure for Statham’s Disease and don their hoodies once again to go after Briggs. That’s right! We’re watching Proud Mary starring Taraji P. Henson who plays a hitman with a heart of gold. I feel like this is the yin to the Death Wish yang, which is more like a regular person with a heart of shit. Let’s go!
Proud Mary (2018) – BMeTric: 42.2
(This is heartening. This felt like one of the films we were kind of forced into because of the chain reaction, but sub-5.0 is pretty amazing. The film might genuinely be pretty terrible, which would be kind of fun.)
RogerEbert.com – 2.5 stars – Screen Gems, the studio responsible for “Proud Mary” was nice enough to make their product almost impossible for me to see before my deadline. Genre films such as this often don’t have critics’ screenings, which is fine, but practically every film nowadays has night screenings. Manhattan has hundreds upon hundreds of movie screens, yet not one of them was playing “Proud Mary” on Thursday. I do not believe this had anything to do with quality; “The Snowman,” which is about 50 times worse than this film, not only gave us all the clues but it also gave us early screenings at every single theater that ran it on its opening Friday.
(I kind of love the hit on The Snowman at the end there. Yeah, the big thing about this film was it wasn’t screened for critics which was somewhat odd considering the reviews ultimately were bad but not terrible (almost 30% on Rotten Tomatoes). So now I have two differing opinions. Critics think its meh. IMDb suggests it is terrible. I’m going with the critics. Who knows, it is possible IMDb is getting brigaded by racists because of the predominantly black cast. It has been known to happen.)
Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ1Zcv54USA
(Like the songs. Hate how they drop the audio out throughout. Just really dumb. I also don’t really get it … it is a remake of Gloria, but the kid is in the trailer for about 4 seconds which is an odd choice. Finally, who wears the most conspicuous blonde wig to a hit? Whatever, this looks dumb.)
Directors – Babak Najafi – (Known For: Easy Money II: Hard to Kill; BMT: Proud Mary; London Has Fallen; Notes: Iranian by birth, but grew up in Sweden as a refugee in the 80s. A huge refugee success story to say the least.)
Writers – John Stuart Newman (story by & screenplay by) – (BMT: Proud Mary; Notes: Wrote on 805 episodes of Days of Our Lives. More recently he wrote for the wildly successful television adaptation of Get Shorty. I hope they get to adapt Be Cool into something good as well (zing).)
Christian Swegal (story by & screenplay by) – (BMT: Proud Mary; Notes: Nothing online about the guy. He does have this very enigmatic website though)
Steve Antin (screenplay by) (as Steven Antin) – (Known For: Inside Monkey Zetterland; Future BMT: Chasing Papi; Gloria; BMT: Proud Mary; Burlesque; Notes: Brother of Robin Antin the founder of the Pussycat Dolls. He was an actor in the 80s, then turned to writing. He adapted the 1980 Gloria into the not-so-well-received 1999 version which is why he has this credit.)
Actors – Taraji P. Henson – (Known For: Ralph Breaks the Internet; The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; Hidden Figures; The Karate Kid; Four Brothers; Date Night; Think Like a Man; Hustle & Flow; Baby Boy; Top Five; The Good Doctor; The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle; I Can Do Bad All by Myself; Something New; The Family That Preys; Talk to Me; Future BMT: Hair Show; No Good Deed; Think Like a Man Too; Term Life; Larry Crowne; Acrimony; Peep World; Smokin’ Aces; Not Easily Broken; BMT: Proud Mary; Notes: Nominated for Best Supporting Actress in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Has become famous more recently as the star of the show Empire.)
Billy Brown – (Known For: Star Trek; Cloverfield; The Lost World: Jurassic Park; Race to Witch Mountain; Lakeview Terrace; Geronimo: An American Legend; The Wild Thornberrys Movie; Future BMT: The Beautician and the Beast; BMT: Proud Mary; Notes: Mostly a television actor, most recently in 68 episodes of How to Get Away with Murder. Apparently the narrator of US Marines commercial.)
Jahi Di’Allo Winston – (Known For: The Upside; BMT: Proud Mary; Notes: Was recently in Everything Sucks!, a television show set in the 90s … which means there are nostalgia based shows set in the 90s now, ooooof.)
Budget/Gross – $14–30 million / Domestic: $20,877,013 (Worldwide: $21,753,365)
(The $30 million probably includes the promotion. Which makes this a pretty big bomb. Which isn’t surprising considering they kind of buried it knowing it wasn’t going to be particularly well received.)
#41 for the Hitman / Assassin genre
(The big boom for the genre was with the Bourne movies. It is just now getting back into the swing of things. That is likely to do with John Wick, there isn’t much else impressive recently. This Means War is strangely the most successful of the BMT films. Not surprisingly the Nic Cage classic Bangkok Dangerous was the least successful.)
Rotten Tomatoes – 28% (18/64): Proud Mary proves Taraji P. Henson has more than enough attitude and charisma to carry an action movie — just not, unfortunately, one this indifferently assembled.
(And I’m back to being concerned. It seems strange it has such bad reviews, but even stranger to see it be one of the worst reviewed films of the year on IMDb. Just seems weird. Reviewer Highlight: “Proud Mary” isn’t a retro action thriller at all, but a staid family drama, and an incredibly boring one at that. – Katie Walsh, Los Angeles Times)
Poster – Proud Mary Keep on Sklogin’ (A)
(Yup, I like it. Very artistic. Could see this on a wall somewhere of someone who didn’t even watch the film but just likes the poster. Got a unique style, nice balance, and nice color.)
Tagline(s) – Killing for the man every night and day. (B-)
(Play on the song that the title is based on. It’s clever enough, but a little long and clunky. Meh.)
Keyword(s) – hitwoman; Top Ten by BMeTric: 75.2 Elektra (2005); 65.1 The Crow: City of Angels (1996); 58.6 The First Purge (2018); 46.6 Double Impact (1991); 42.2 Proud Mary (2018); 39.6 Haywire (2011); 36.2 Around the World in 80 Days (2004); 35.6 Skyscraper (2018); 29.9 Chek law dak gung (2002); 29.6 Shadowboxer (2005);
(It is too bad Skyscraper didn’t qualify. I just watched it on a plane, and it is some of the silliest shit I’ve ever seen. The Rock climbs hand over hand up a 1000+ foot crane. I’m not joking. He scales the Empire State Building hand over hand basically.)
Notes – Loosely based on the movie Gloria (1980). (Looks interesting. Fun fact is that Gloria, despite being critically acclaimed, is a Razzie winner for Worst Supporting Actor. Plus it was remade in 1999, and that version definitely qualifies.)
This is the second time Taraji P. Henson has played a hit woman. She had a similar role in Smokin’ Aces (2006).
This film reunites Danny Glover and Margaret Avery, who starred together in The Color Purple (1985).
For all the shootings and killings, no police are ever visible in the movie.
Bad Movie Twins 