There’s no reason to skirt around it: Widows is rock-your-socks-off, absolute power-house filmmaking – the likes of which just don’t get made as much as they should.
It’s totally gripping, edge-of-your-seat fare that is elevated with its arthouse sensibilities. Widows is the type of movie that you forget can even be this good for the very reason that, well, these types of movies don’t get made very much anymore – those being the elevated big screen genre movie for adult audiences. Not since The Dark Knight has a movie felt so commercially and artistically composed – and for both being movies about vigilantes seeking their own brand of personal justice, it somehow feels to be an appropriate comparison.
A wickedly pulpy plot and muscly movie, Widows crackles with emotional drama in its name already. Adapted from the stage play by Lynda La Plante, the story follows a group of women who aren’t just connected by the unexpected passing of their husbands but by the same circumstance in which they lose them. In a heist job-gone-terribly-wrong, their criminal husbands end up dead. These fractured women are left alone to experience new grief and question how to move forward when their collective husbands’ debt is still owed and the next job is laid out in front of them.
‘Widows’ is event filmmaking, a stunning and terrific execution that elevates its genre to be one of the most gripping and engrossing times in theaters this year.
The arthouse drama version of this might see these women meet and turn to each other for support, with long, drawn-out dialogue. But this is a Genre movie with a capital “G,” and pulp female-championing writer Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl) capitalizes on that, writing these women to come together to show the opposite of victimhood but as an aggressor.
Widows is such a strong outing for the number of different versions of women we see onscreen. There’s steely Veronica (Viola Davis), determined Linda (Michelle Rodriguez) and insecure Alice (Elizabeth Debicki), who all experience their newfound situations in different ways. While Veronica is left to devise her next steps from her lavish high-rise apartment, it’s Linda whose husband left her with crippling debt and two small girls and emotionally and psychically abused Alice a chance at a new start. All three women bring their very most to these characters, and their energy makes this movie run like a blazing freight train.
Bringing all of these diverse elements together – the muscly action along with arthouse storytelling – is Academy Award-winning director Steve McQueen, who makes this movie a prestige picture with subtly woven subtext and themes. This deft balance fits like an intricately-connected web all its own, which makes the plot conceited in this movie look amateur by comparison. The A-list supporting actors (Liam Neeson, Colin Farrell, Robert Duvall, Daniel Kaluuya round out the rest of the roles) are paired with incredible writing that makes this a tightly packaged affair. Advanced McQueen fans will see the through-line of his films here, that of characters fighting for survival and against injustice that was at the center of films like 12 Years a Slave, Shame, and Hunger. Beyond criminals and robberies and more, Widows shows the lengths that desperate people are capable of going to in order to save themselves from horrific despair.
So run – don’t walk, to see this one. Widows is stunning and terrific and one of the most gripping and engrossing films to see in theaters this year.
129 min. ‘Widows’ is rated R for violence, language throughout, and some sexual content/nudity.
