By John Saeger
Amazon’s I’m Your Woman looks like a driving action piece built around the survival of a woman left on her own. The streaming service took one of its prime talents and inserted Rachel Brosnahan into a role similar to one of signature career moments. Appearances, however, are a little deceiving in a flat film with a promising premise and lead.
Directed by relative newcomer Julia Hart, I’m Your Woman stars Brosnahan as a young mother who is thrust into a race for survival after her husband’s actions put her in peril. Brosnahan’s Jean and the infant are running from something bad. We don’t know quite what that is for most of the film, but the pair are constantly shuttled between safe houses and bits of their outside danger only leak out from precious few interactions.
Despite the tease of a premise similar to the 2018 crime drama Widows, Hart’s movie does not stand up to Steve McQueen’s excellent film. The flick lacks the layers and story progression of its predecessor. More often than not, I’m Your Woman feels like the sketch of a potential thriller that never delivers in full.
Brosnahan is an A-level actor who is given very few moment to flourish. Anyone who has seen her on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel knows that she is capable of scenes with charisma. The actor is given few moments where she interacts with other and builds a film worth emotional investment.
The closer comparison as to how Brosnahan can thrive is with her previous House of Cards character. In the groundbreaking Netflix series, she also plays an unwitting fugitive pawn in a dark game. That character grows into one of the most empathetic of the groundbreaking show. While her part in I’m Your Woman is not an unsympathetic role, there is little emotional connection to her other than survival.
This is not a knock on her performance. The acting in the movie is as good as it can be in spite of an arid script. In fact, the handful of scenes in which characters connect with each other are among the few noteworthy scenes because they fill in the pieces of her life. More of these would have gone a long way in creating a more worthy hybrid of Taken and Widows.
This absence of mystery, characters, script, and action add up to… not much. While that is a surprise because Hart directed carefully crafted scenes, I’m Your Woman just does not click as a final product. With little emotion in play, a movie that lacks spark or a brisk pask results in a stale two hours.
About the Author: John Saeger is a music and film writer from Philadelphia. He is also the co-host of the Philly sports podcast The Boo Birds. Prior to The Globe, he wrote the pop-culture blog Long After Dark, a site dedicated to the arts in the City of Brotherly Love and beyond. Email/ Twitter
Leave a Comment