Widows

Synopsis: When a group of professional thieves are killed in a heist gone wrong their wives (Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez and Elizabeth Debicki) band together in order to pay a two million dollar mob debt that is their husbands’ only legacy to them.

A thriller is a thriller is a thriller. Unless, one should now add, it is directed by Steve McQueen, the Afro-American director of the Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave (2013), the provocative sex-addiction drama, Shame (2012) and one of the best films there is on the Irish Troubles, Hunger (2008). Whereas a lesser director might have simply gender-reversed the heist movie template with kick-ass chicks busting the usual boy moves (think of this year's Ocean’s 8) McQueen, making his first foray into genre film-making, instead gives us a compelling action-drama with well-rounded female protagonists that is both a solid crime thriller and a thoughtfully engaging story of survival set against the backdrop of one of the most fraught areas of modern urban America (and the setting for Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq, 2015), the Southside of Chicago.

Adapted for the big screen by the director with Gillian Flynn, the author of Gone Girl (2014) Widows is based on a1980s British television series written by Lynda La Plante.  McQueen economically sets up the film’s twin narrative arcs, that of the heist and the deepening relationship between the woman by opening with a striking, even confrontational, overhead shot of Veronica (Davis) and her husband Harry (Liam Neeson) in bed in their upscale high-rise apartment making love. Thumbnail sketches then briefly introduce us to Linda (Rodriguez), Alice (Debicki) and Amanda (Carrie Coon) and their spouses before we are, as it were, slammed up against a wall by a brutal cut to a frenetic robbery going wrong which culminates in an explosion in which these women’s husbands are killed.

The film’s main character, Veronica is bereft, but soon learns that Harry was robbing black gang boss Jamal (Brian Tyree Henry) and that as far as latter is concerned, as Harry’s spouse she owes him the $2 million that went up with the explosion. Or else she’s sleeping with the fishes. Going through Harry’s effects she finds his plans for his next job, the robbery of a corrupt local politician, Tom Mulligan (Robert Duvall), and approaches the other widows to enlist their help. Both Linda and Alice are floundering without their less-than-reliable husband’s money and opt in but Amanda is not interested. The women are eventually joined by Linda’s sometime babysitter Belle (Cynthia Erivo) a single mother struggling to make ends meet as a hairdresser.

What makes Widows so much more than just another crime thriller is the attention that Flynn and McQueen give to the women over and above that given to the actual heist. Indeed some audiences may well find that the handling of the latter is overly schematic. But let’s face it, it is not plot mechanics that holds our attention in any film but rather the motivation for and development of its characters. In this respect Davis has a plum role as the forceful Veronica, driven in part by grief (there is a triple dimension to this which is gradually revealed), part by vengeance and part by sheer necessity, a combination that is very unusual for a genre movie of this stripe in which easy money is the usual objective, and it is she who galvanizes the other less confident women into action.

Whilst Rodriguez’s Linda is the least developed of the characters, Debicki’s Alice engages (she even gets a somewhat comical scene when Alice pretends to be an eastern European sex worker in order to buy some guns) as a woman with low self-esteem brought up to depend on men by her controlling mother (our own go-to crime matriarch Jacki Weaver) who with complete seriousness encourages her to make a new career in the escort industry. Erivo who was so good in the recent Bad Times at the El Royale seals the deal as a no-nonsense getaway driver.  In the sub-plot concerning the pre-black, Irish-American history of Chicago’s politically corrupt Southside Colin Farrell makes a typically solid contribution as Tom Mulligan’s reluctant son, Jack.

McQueen, aided by Sean Bobbitt’s mobile camera always keeps the staging fresh and exciting and Flynn’s multi-layered screenplay has depth at same time as it entertains, albeit rather somberly so. Quite a combination. My only reservation is the casting of Neeson as Veronica’s husband. This type of casting always gives away something of the character’s importance to the story and in this case robs the film of its one attempt at surprise.

Widows is no glib, market-driven fantasy of female empowerment dressed up with action movie frills but is rather a persuasive drama about women going it alone in what conventionally has always been a man’s world.

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