Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-

The crime genre can always use an injection of new perspectives, and I’m Your Woman certainly fits that bill—co-written and directed by a woman (Julia Hart), featuring a woman protagonist (Rachel Brosnahan). Jean, the main character, starts off naive, when she is suddenly thrust into a scenario in which she’s on the run after her criminal husband goes missing. But she learns quickly, and while Brosnahan conveys her fear and vulnerability with straightforward realism, she is a self-actualized woman who does what she has to when circumstances force her hand. This is not a woman who folds, even when terrified, and I love that about her, and about this movie.

We have long needed more movies like this, and we still do, but it’s heartening to see them getting made at least somewhat more frequently. This one has been available on Prime Video since December 11, and it is well worth watching. I’ve seen a few movies since which, looking back, I rather wish I had watched this one sooner instead.

The crime genre just isn’t that appealing to everyone on its own, especially over the holidays. There’s nothing “festive” about this movie. Well, the holidays are over now, so that’s perfect! You should start your new year with a very well-made film that, in so doing, supports women filmmakers. Not that it being directed and led by women is the reason to watch; the film is objectively good in its own right.

The editing in particular is subtly impressive. I’m Your Woman runs at roughly two hours, and it has no dull moments, even with no fewer than three sequences depicting Jean spending an extended amount of time just . . . waiting. First at a hotel as a temporary hideout; then to a house she’s taken to by a colleague of her husband’s; and finally to a cabin in the woods. In every case, the pacing still propels the story forward, never creating the same sense of tedium that Jean surely feels.

Julia Hart’s direction slyly doles out Jean’s story in bits and pieces as her present circumstances unfold, only adding to the tension and frequent suspense. When the film opens, Jean’s husband Eddie (Bill Heck) suddenly shows up at home with a baby, one Jean has never seen before, but Eddie still says “It’s our baby.” Said baby is with Jean for the majority of the rest of the movie. Eddie turns out to have surprising connections to the rest of the principal characters we eventually meet, offering the story a complexity without being contrived.

Hart—and, presumably, co-writer Jordan Horowitz—also fold in certain details, without which, I’m Your Woman would be a lot easier to criticize. American racism is far from the point of this story, but with multiple Black supporting characters, it would be foolish to pretend it isn’t there. Anrizé Kene plays Cal, the man sent to protect Jean, and when they in a car and confronted by a white police officer clearly suspicious of a Black man driving a car with a white woman and a white baby in it, a familiar tension comes into the picture that is both inevitable and unrelated to the story at hand.

Dynamics shift halfway through the film, when Cal has left Jean at his family cabin, and a while later she is met by Cal’s wife Teri (Marsha Stephanie Blake), his father (Frankie Faison), and his young son (Da’mauri Parks, in his first film role). All of them have some connection to Eddie that Jean is unaware of, painting a picture of her husband and his past she never knew, or never thought to examine.

I did find myself wondering how this movie might work if, say, the entire story were told from Teri’s perspective. Marsha Stephanie Blake only exists in the second hour of I’m Your Woman, but the entirety of her story might actually be more interesting. That said, Rachel Brosnahan is excellent as Jean, making it easy to forget she is also the title character in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, a radically different character, in both looks and demeanor.

A lot of I’m Your Woman is performed in hushed tones, making it a rather quiet film for much of the time, unless the baby is crying, or the three or so sequences featuring gunfire. One such scene takes place at a dance club Jean and Teri visit, in order to speak to its owner, and the panic that ensues is very well staged. That baby—and the little boy, for that matter—are frequently endangered, but no direct harm ever comes to them, which is both a relief and an added tension. The same could be said of Jean herself, actually, who keeps moving through chaos and life threatening scenarios unscathed, except perhaps for her emotional state.

This movie is an unusually great example of character development, given how different Jean is at the end from the beginning. It frequently puts her in states of tedium in between bursts of terrified excitement, but for us as viewers, there is never a dull moment, because this is storytelling at its best.

*Turns out they’re both badasses, who knew?*

Overall: B+