A gang of thieves is wiped out in a botched job, and their widowed wives have to group up for their own heist to pay off their husbands' debts. Sounds like a concept that could make for a fun gender-flipped caper. Unfortunately, that's not at all what director/co-writer Steve McQueen had in mind.
Instead Widows — based on a 1980s British TV series and co-scripted by critic-turned-blockbuster-novelist Gillian Flynn — is constructed as more of a sociopolitical drama, and the film suffers for it. Viola Davis plays Veronica Rawlins, a middle-class Chicagoan whose criminal-mastermind husband, Harry (Liam Neeson), dies along with his crew when police blow up their getaway van. The money they stole blew up too, and it belonged to Jamal Manning (Brian Tyree Henry, who plays Paper Boi on Atlanta), a local crime boss who's running for ward alderman. Jamal threatens Veronica, demanding that she pay back back the $2 million that Harry took. An opportunity arises when she discovers Harry's heist notebook, which includes detailed plans for his next target. Veronica strong-arms the wives of Harry's dead accomplices — Linda (Michelle Rodriguez) and Alice (Elizabeth Debicki) — into joining her crew, and they eventually add a fourth in the form of Linda's down-on-her-luck babysitter (Cynthia Erivo, on a roll following Bad Times at the El Royale).
So that sounds like enough for a movie right there, huh? But McQueen and Flynn also throw in the Mulligan family: son Jack (Colin Farrell), who's running against Manning for alderman, and father Tom (Robert Duvall), a one-time political powerhouse who's got no time for folks who aren't white. McQueen bounces around all of these characters as he touches on far-ranging issues plaguing Chicago including racism, dirty politics and guns. He even finds time to make a statement on young black men who are targeted by white cops.
Look, there's nothing wrong with trying to elevate a film beyond its genre. And there are some thoughtful, impressive scenes in Widows, including a standout "oner" where we travel along with Farrell as he drives from Chicago's projects to his fancy upper-class neighborhood. But while McQueen, whose last film, 12 Years a Slave, won an Oscar for Best Picture, distracts himself with trying to make his movie feel important, the primary heist plot unravels underneath him. The motivations of secondary characters don't hold up under scrutiny, and the film's late-game twists make no logical sense. You can't keep adding meat to a film when its skeleton is crumbling underneath.
Widows isn't a total wash, thanks to some strong performances. Davis is a little one-note but is as formidable as always. It's nice to see Rodriguez play somebody other than Letty in a major studio release. The standout might be Debicki, who portrays a woman trying to reclaim her own life after too many years serving as a punching bag/sex object. She's great, as is Daniel Kaluuya, the rising star of Get Out, who pulls a new trick out of his bag to play a terrifyingly threatening gang enforcer. (Although his character is one where you end up asking, "Wait, why is this guy doing that right now?" with the movie offering no credible answer in return.)
Two Cult Spark favorites are wasted — Carrie Coon, who is starting to get cast in big movies now but needs bigger parts, and Jon Bernthal, who, with this and Baby Driver, has made two heist films in as many years where he's removed from the movie almost as quickly as he's introduced. Next time Bernthal is cast as part of a criminal crew, can he at least stick around for a while, please?!
Ultimately, Widows collapses under its own pretenses. Maybe it was a risk worth taking for McQueen. After all, we already saw Ocean's 8 hit theaters this year, so it's not like we needed another breezy women-centric caper flick. But trying to jack up a two-hour heist movie with enough social commentary to fill up any given season of The Wire ends up being too much for Widows to bear.
