I’m trying to imagine how a film like this comes about. Like, maybe a studio exec was like, “we have this one project, a heist movie, like one of those dad movies you’d catch on cable, how do we spice this up?” And another exec snorts a line of coke, and says, “hey, what if…we give it to the lady behind Gone Girl and the dude known for making brutal and emotionally draining arthouse films?” The first exec snorts a line of his own before yelling out, “brilliant!”
Jokes aside, Widows isn’t too far off from the “dad movie you’d catch on cable” comparison since Steve McQueen and Gillian Flynn are adapting an 80s British series of the same name. It’s about a group of women, who became widows after their husbands were killed in a robbery gone wrong. Veronica (Viola Davis), who was the wife of Henry Rawlins (Liam Neeson), the brains behind the robbers, is now left alone, and forced to deal with the people whose money Henry stole. In order to pay them back, she enlists the help of the other widows, Linda (Michelle Rodriguez) and Alice (Elizabeth Debicki), to pull of a heist.
Having not seen the original show, I can’t speak to how it works as an adaptation. Though, I can say that knowing it was based on a show going in, you can certainly see where it may have expanded certain characters and certain moments, and yet, it still comes together incredibly well, and with a lot of focus. McQueen and Flynn really bring the best out of each other from Flynn’s careful characterization to McQueen’s ability to create an authentic sense of place as he takes the location from the show’s original London setting to Chicago.
They really bring the best out of each other as the film explores the lives of each of the widows, embracing what makes them different, and smartly and subtly touching on things like intersectionality, economic inequality, capitalism, political corruption, gender roles, and many other timely topics. I’m not entirely convinced it’s actually saying anything about these ideas aside from obvious statements about women and the pressures put on them by the socio-political-economic machine, but these details into Chicago’s politics, with characters like Colin Farrell’s Jack Mulligan or Brian Tyree Henry’s Jamal Manning, all serve to paint a fuller picture of the world that these characters inhabit, and it does so with serious panache. It even gets small details right, like when it devotes an entire moment to show Veronica dropping off her adorable westie at one of those dog boarding centers before she goes for the heist.
It also helps that the cast is stellar across the board. Davis continues to show that she’s one of the best actors working today. It’s cool seeing Rodriguez show off the range that she hasn’t really gotten the opportunity to tap into in recent years. This is easily the best I’ve seen from Debicki. And even supporting players like Cynthia Erivo (who already had an impressive turn in Bad Times At The El Royale), Daniel Kaluuya (a brilliant villain), Jackie Weaver, Lukas Haas, Brian Tyree Henry, Robert Duvall, and several others, get the chance to make a big impressions with their limited screen time.
When I came out of Widows, I was thinking to myself, “now that’s what I call a movie!” An exercise in mainstream escapism that manages to put itself in a real world context, and does it in a way that treats the audience like adults. It’s thrilling, thoughtful, and tremendously entertaining work from a collection of talent working at the top of their game. This is gritty, old school filmmaking, but made with a modern sense of artistry and inclusivity. It’s honestly kind of sad that this kind of filmmaking is so refreshing coming from the modern studio system, when it should be the standard. This couldn’t have been more my jam if it tried. Don’t miss out on this one.