WIDOWS, directed by Steve McQueen from a screenplay by Gone Girl novelist Gillian Flynn and Steve McQueen, is based on the U.K. television mini-series, Widows, written by Lynda La Plante.
Relocated from Eighties London, Widows is set in contemporary Chicago amidst a time of political and societal turmoil.
The film begins with stupendous face sucking between Liam Neeson and Viola Davis. They play a married couple whose swish lifestyle is funded by his virtuosity as planner and leader of a gang of armed robbers.
Cut to the execution of a heist that turns into the execution of the robbers.
Davis’ character is visited by an ultimatum that requires a debt to be paid so she contacts the other widows to wipe the debt by conducting a heist, the plans of which were already plotted by her dead husband.
The Widows are portrayed by Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Cynthia Erivo, so good in the recent Bad Times at the El Royale. all excellent in their roles.
Playing a shady Chicago politician appointed by nepotism Colin Farrell gets to play off Robert Duvall as his overbearing father. One scene in particular will sear into film’s classic fractured filial confrontations.
Speaking of filial, Jackie Weaver plays Elizabeth Debicki’s mother in another coruscating scene of pragmatic parenting.
Daniel Kaluuya imprints a surly, sadist psycho, a debt collector who rather collect deaths and Garrett Dillahunt impresses as Davis’ dutiful driver.
WIDOWS is much more than a heist movie. The widows are not just women bereaved, but women abused. Their deceased spouses either beat or betrayed them or both. There’s not decent male role model in the picture, cop or crim, black or white.
McQueen’s shooting style is evident with some audacious choices – a disembodied conversation in a car as the camera prowls the exterior streets the vehicle traverses until it arrives at its destination in concert with the cessation of the dialogue is a bold and fresh delivery of a stock scene.
WIDOWS is a crime caper with a Me Too hash tag.