John Henry (2020)
John Henry is certainly not one of Terry Crews’ best films. Released in 2020 this film went relatively unnoticed in a year where the majority of people were at home watching movies. Crews is a versatile talent but he didn’t seem to be a good fit for this role. “A thug-life thriller so frequently preposterous that it almost resembles a parody,” said Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times. She referred to the film as “a big slice of ham,” The movie itself uses elements of the John Henry folklore story such as the use of the sledgehammer. Aside from that, the only other similarity is the namesake.
Finding its way to Netflix in May 2020, it did gain some traction when it became the second most popular movie on the streaming service. Still, expectations for this film remained low. Michael Rechtshaffen of the Los Angeles Times delivered a savage perspective when he wrote “Not that there was any expectation of cinematic gold being spun here, but director and co-writer Will Forbes never achieves any satisfying sense of momentum.”