Straw is one of Tyler Perry’s better movies, short-changed a little by some of his overkill flaws. Dudeman needs a cowriter or someone to pull him back from his worst instincts. But when you look past some of the clunk, it’s a pretty solid, well acted pressure cooker.

Taraji P. Henson stars as as a woman having a very bad day. You might even say too bad of a day (people break for far less). She’s a single mother and social services are sniffing around. She’s also being threatened with eviction, her boss wants to fire her, there’s a guy with road rage, her car gets towed, etc. She winds up taking a bank hostage and the cops are brought in.

It’s a lot for one day. It’s overkills. But it’s also well directed, I felt for the character, and the thematic messages work. The film nails a certain over-the-edge fundamentally-the-system-is-broken tension.

It’s possible during the height of her mental crisis, Henson overdoes it a bit… but I suspect different people will take her manic performance differently. She eventually quells the overload and turns in a generally sympathetic but unbalanced performance.

Teyana Taylor plays a sympathetic cop on the outside. Her acting is fine but her makeup and costuming were too coifed. As a working detective, she always looks like she’s on the runway instead… even a dozen hours into this hostage standoff. This isn’t on the actress, it’s on costuming, makeup, and Tyler Perry choices (presumably).

There’s also some clunky stuff in the writing and in the the over-the-top bad guy cops. You can have them be the bad guys without making them twirl their mustaches… but Tyler Perry goes maximal because that’s just how he writes and directs nuance (that is to say: none. No nuance at all).

But for one of these pressure cooker films, I looked past a lot of Perry’s clunk and enjoyed what he got right. And the acting job from Henson. This is one of Mr. Perry’s better efforts in my book, even if it smells a little of his worst habits.

Score: 84