An unusually smart, hip thriller.
Widows
Grade: B+
Director: Steve McQueen (!2 Years a Slave)
Screenplay: McQueen, Gilliam Flynn (Gone Girl), based on the Lynda La Plante book
Cast: Viola Davis (Fences), Michelle Rodriguez (Fast & Furious)
Rating: R
Runtime: 2 hr 9 min
By: John DeSando
“What I've learned from men like my father and your husband is that you reap what you sow.” Jack Mulligan (Colin Farrell)
“And so, it goes,” as Kurt Vonnegut said with a sense of inevitably for the underbelly of life. In the superior heist movie, Widows, set in the dicey south side of Chicago, a heist movie is more than a robbery. It condenses the seamy side of life into a stew of politics, sociology, and existentialism so as to relegate the actual heist to secondary status while the robbers reap a mixed bag of dangers and a few benefits for their reaping.
Although this is an action film, it serves the feminist perspective well as four wives face life without their mobster husbands, who have recently died in a robust heist gone terribly wrong. The ladies will pull a robbery using a template from Harry (Liam Neeson), late husband of Veronica (Viola Davis). The heist will be a sweet vengeance on those who assassinated the crooks and buy freedom from the bonds of servitude. In that sense, writer/director Steve McQueen is in territory familiar to his 12 Years a Slave.
Although violence is coin of the realm in this type of a thriller, character development defines it as an unusually dense and psychological drama, where each character works out a fate tied to a personality and too frequently engages a duplicitous enemy capable of emotional disguise almost impossible to deconstruct. For instance, Alice (Elizabeth Debicki) is practically forced into prostitution by her mother (Jacki Weaver), yielding psychological distress and potentially crucial information for the would-be burglars. Every action has a consequence, frequently ambivalent but always fraught with danger.
Widows is stylish and smart, a caper with profound racial and spiritual insights, making it entertaining and professional. “Now the best thing we have going for us is being who we are.” Veronica
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
