Tall tale of a hitwoman (Taraji P. Henson) with a heart of
gold who takes in the orphaned son (Jahi Di'Allo Winston) of one of her victims
and dispatches the Fagin-like leader (Xander Berkeley) of the gang into whose
service the lad was ensnared in the wake of his dad's death. But this new
arrangement does not sit well with the father (Danny Glover) and son (Billy
Brown) who run the mob family to which she belongs, the latter of whom is also
her ex-boyfriend. Intended as an homage to female-led blaxploitation films of
the 1970s, director Babak Najafi's drama is all style and no credibility since
John Stuart Newman's screenplay fails to lay the foundation either of its
unlikely plot or of its adoptive central relationship. Morality also gets taken
out as the script gives its featured assassin a pass for the two most prominent
of her killings on the grounds that her targets are bad guys.
Watch out for: A vengeance
theme, much stylized gunplay with fleeting but nasty gore, a scene of torture,
brief partial nudity, several uses of profanity, about a half-dozen milder
oaths, a couple of rough and numerous crude and crass terms.
Rated: A-III, adults; MPAA:
R.
© Arlington Catholic Herald 2018