Movie Review: Widows

Widows **** ½ / *****

Directed by: Steve McQueen.

Written by: Gillian Flynn and Steve McQueen based on the TV show by Lynda La Plante.

Starring: Viola Davis (Veronica Rawlins), Michelle Rodriguez (Linda Perelli), Elizabeth Debicki (Alice Gunner), Colin Farrell (Jack Mulligan), Brian Tyree Henry (Jamal Manning), Daniel Kaluuya (Jatemme Manning), Cynthia Erivo (Belle), Jacki Weaver (Agnieska), Carrie Coon (Amanda), Robert Duvall (Tom Mulligan), Liam Neeson (Harry Rawlings), Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (Carlos), Jon Bernthal (Florek), Garret Dillahunt (Bash), Kevin J. O’Connor (Bobby Welsh), Lukas Haas (David).

 

I don’t know what possessed Steve McQueen to make Widows as his long awaited follow-up film to the Oscar winning 12 Years a Slave – and honestly, I don’t much care. The film isn’t what you would expect from the filmmaker who not only directed 12 Years a Slave, but also Shame, about a sex addict spiraling out of control and Hunger, about a prisoner slowly dying from a hunger strike (both of those characters played brilliantly by Michael Fassbender). Up until Widows, McQueen’s films have been punishing to watch – daring you look away from the pain on display, the weakness of human flesh, etc. In Widows, he has crafted one of the most entertaining films of the year – a mature, intelligent heist film aimed at adult audiences, that functions purely as entertainment, but also has a lot on its mind. It addresses issues of misogyny and racism, police brutality, and class and political corruption, but does it all with a light, deft touch. It’s not interested in beating you over the head with its message – just telling its story, but doing so in a recognizable, messy world.

 

The film opens with a robbery gone wrong that leaves the four criminals dead – and their wives, obviously, widows. The men were robbing a powerful drug dealer, Jamal Manning (Brian Tyree Henry), who is also running for city council. His $2 million burned up in the course of the robbery – and he wants it back. He goes to the widow of the ringleader, Veronica Rawlings (Viola Davis) – and gives her two weeks to come up with the cash. She has nothing – except the notebook her husband left behind, and inside, a plan for their next robbery – one that would net them $5 million. Her plan is simple – enlist the other widows to help pull off the heist. Linda (Michelle Rodriguez) and Alice (Elizabeth Debicki) agree, and the planning begins in earnest.

 

All of this is just the main plot of what is an intricately structured movie, with a hell of lot of subplots, and minor characters, that miraculously never feels overstuffed, and no one feels shortchanged. Colin Farrell gives one of his best performances as Jack Mulligan – the man running against Jamal for that city council seat, that has long been held by Jack’s father, Tom (Robert Duvall). The boundaries have recent been redrawn, and all of a sudden, Jack has to appeal to many more black voters than his father ever had to. And while he may be running against a drug dealer, he has far from clean hands himself. Jamal meanwhile usually lets his brother, Jatemme (Daniel Kaluuya) do all the dirty work – and he is scheming throughout the movie how to get money from just about everyone. There’s also Belle (Cynthia Erivo), a hairdresser, working as many jobs as possible to make ends meet, Agnieska (Jacki Weaver), Alice’s mother who basically advises her daughter to pimp herself out and David (Lukas Haas) the rich man Alice meets online who wants to keep her as a private courtesan. And so on and so on.

 

The screenplay for the movie was written by McQueen and Gillian Flynn – who with her work adapting her own books Gone Girl and Sharp Objects into a brilliant movie and miniseries respectively, and now here, continues to impress me. This movie gives everyone a chance to impress, but it doesn’t feel like a series of scenes designed to allow the actors to impress. The best performances in the film are probably by Davis, who anchors the film with her powerful presence, Kaluuya, one of the most memorable villains of the year and Debicki, who walks away with the whole movie as Alice, who is a lot smarter than everyone in the movie thinks she is. But there isn’t an off performance in the bunch.

 

While this is a different style of filmmaking than we are used to seeing from McQueen, it is done with the same assured hand at the helm – with some truly great sequences in it – the best probably being a long shot outside the car of Farrell’s limo as it takes from a poor area in Chicago to an affluent one in a matter of minutes. The rest of film, clearly inspired by filmmakers like Michael Mann, is as assured as that sequence. It’s brilliant work by McQueen – proving that you can still find fun, intelligent adult genre films out there. They don’t come around as often as they used to.