Home Video: 'Proud Mary'

"Proud Mary" (out now on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital) features Taraji P. Henson as a ruthless mob assassin. That seems like a guaranteed winner of a premise, one that should launch a series of movies along the lines of "Atomic Blonde" or "John Wick."

Unfortunately, screenwriters John Stuart Newman & Christian Swegal and Steven Antin went light on the mayhem and heavy on the redemption. Henson's Mary knocks off a Boston bookie and finds his young son in the next room. She keeps tabs on him over the next few years and eventually takes him in when that the growing boy starts getting tangled up in the drug business.

That causes problems with rival gangs and her own crime family. The plot might work for the fourth movie in a series but this one would've been a lot better if it concentrated on some flimsy reasons why Mary became a hitter and she wreaked a bit more vengeance on her enemies.

The movie clocks in at 89 minutes, so you're not going to be stuck in one of those endless plot swamps for 2 1/2 hours. If you're a big "Empire" fan, you might enjoy Henson in this but the movie really should've been a lot better.