As bad as it is, there’s always someone doin’ it worse!” That’s just one of the pearls of wisdom dropped in Straw (now streaming on Netflix), an effectively tense action-melodrama set during a particularly rotten day in which a hard-working woman who only wants to take care of her daughter finally snaps.

Even diehard fans of the tireless Tyler Perry sometimes wish he'd slow down a bit to focus on quality over quantity. But Netflix feature "Straw" has a cultural pulse-taking urgency that lifts it above his usual run of comedies and melodramatic potboilers,