Widows: Grabbing Grief by the Guns
Directed by Steve McQueen
Starring Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Colin Farrell, Brian Tyree Henry, Daniel Kaluuya, Liam Neeson
Steve McQueen came off of his greatest film success when 12 Years a Slave won Best Picture. Whereas most directors would immediately dive back in to their craft, ala Iñárritu and Barry Jenkins, McQueen took a several years break before coming back with his newest, and most mainstream film to date. Based on an ’80s TV miniseries by the same name, Widows feels relevant and powerful, and like a natural progression of the heist film genre. It succeeds in crafting a thrilling narrative with invigorating performances and likable characters, without sacrificing tension and mainstream appeal through its set pieces and its more conspiratory developments.
Widows tells the story of several women whose criminal husbands all die in a heist gone wrong. The dead husbands’ boss find that money was embezzled from him by his employees over the years, and demands that his $2 million dollars be reclaimed in one month. After Viola Davis’s character finds a book of heist plans from her late husband, she decides to carry on a heist yet untaken, and to recruit the widows of the other husbands to carry out this task and help make them enough money to live on in the wake of their grief and their massively reduced income. The acting and story beats are pretty well based, and the ensemble cast, most of which are mentioned in the title of the review, all do fantastic jobs. Viola Davis continues to show that she’s one of the most emotionally intense and riveting actors working today, and this is perhaps the juiciest roles Brian Tyree Henry and Daniel Kaluuya have taken, as they steal most of the scenes they are in. Colin Farrell and Robert Duvall’s characters felt a little hammy and cliched at times, but their performances did carry their otherwise soap opera-y relationship. Overall this is a very well acted film across the board.
The screenplay, co-written by Gillian Flynn, shows in its dialogue, as the characters are witty and super intelligent with vocabulary. Though the dialogue is very on the nose, the characters are given enough depth and development to differentiate from one another. I will say that it does tend to drag a little bit in the middle, as the different widows are coerced for different reasons to take on the job and have their own separate difficulties preparing for it, and I felt that Debicki and Rodriguez’s characters were not as developed as well as Davis’s and the supporting male cast. It’s never a bad story, but it’s not as poignant as McQueen’s earlier works narratively. The cinematography is gorgeous as usual, with a few sequences, such as the opening heist, a car ride through Chicago in the middle, and the final car chase and final confrontation of the film are all viscerally filmed. The score by Hans Zimmer does not present anything audiences haven’t heard before, but it is nonetheless effective as usual. The technical merits of this film are stylish and fully representative of McQueen’s physical filmmaking, and the writing represents Flynn’s wit well, though I do believe both have had better successes in the past. Widows is not either of these twos’ best film, but it’s still pretty fantastic.
Overall, Widows successfully presents one of the best original heist films in years, with an ensemble cast, director, and screenplay that mostly perform excellently. It’s not without some fat in the second act, a generic and relatively workmanlike score, and some underdeveloped characters, but given the massive scope of this film and story undertaking, it’s still well worth your time and a worthy addition to McQueen’s filmography. I do believe McQueen and Flynn write well together and I would very much look forward to them collaborating again in the future, and McQueen always gets great performances out of his actors. I didn’t have too much to complain about other than what is mentioned above. Check this out in this crowded awards season.
Verdict: See in Theaters-Full Price
Disclaimer: I review movies based on a 5-tier scale: See in Theaters-Full Price, See in Theaters-Matinee, Rental, Wait for Streaming, and Skip It. If a film is released straight to VOD or streaming, the rating will simply change to either Stream It or Skip It. If you disagree with this review, I encourage you to watch the film and as always, make up your own mind about it. Am I wrong? Am I spot on? Let me know in the comments below!
