Widows Review

Earlier this year we experienced the release of the female-led heist film "Ocean's 8." This was an attempt at a more progressive take on the classic heist film, which means I'm a sexist pig who hates females for not enjoying it, right? OK, snarkiness aside, I'm all for progressive films. Privileged, white, American males don't need to be the ones doing everything in Hollywood. Lets get some more voices and diversity into our films. However, I'm also not going to give every movie a pass just because it's attempting to be progressive. Yes, I would love more female-led films, but that in and of itself won't cause me to automatically praise a movie. You've gotta get the filmmaking elements of the film right as well. I need a good script, a good director, good acting, etc. And that's what "Ocean's 8" failed at. Granted, all the ladies gave it their all in terms of the acting, but the movie was a lazy, carbon copy of "Ocean's Eleven" in terms of the script. Now I wasn't planning on bringing this up again this year. I wrote my review and was going to let it go. So why am I bringing it up in this review? Well, that's easy. "Widows" is another female-led heist film that I didn't know we were getting. But this time director Steve McQueen has showed us how to properly pull it off.

When I started hearing the buzz about "Widows" several months ago, I wasn't actually sure what it was. I read the premise and it confused me a bit. But nevertheless, I was excited about it simply because it was directed by Steve McQueen. No, not the actor Steve McQueen who was a huge deal in 60's and 70's. He passed away in 1980. I'm talking about the British director Steve McQueen whose most recent film was the 2013 best picture winner "12 Years a Slave." So yeah, since it was five years since "12 Years a Slave," I was obviously excited when I heard he had another film. Given "12 Years a Slave," I assumed "Widows" was going to be another huge Oscar film this year. And so did most of the Awards prediction sites that I follow. Seemed like a logical assumption. But as it turns out, it's a movie that tries to ride the line of pleasing the Academy while also pleasing the general public. Unfortunately, in doing so it seems to have fallen through the cracks as a movie that, despite strong critical reviews, isn't quite the type of movie that the Academy gravitates towards, so it's not getting a lot of Oscar buzz at the moment. In terms of pleasing the public, it got lost in the busy Thanksgiving week with the likes of "Creed II," "The Crimes of Grindelwald" and "Ralph Breaks the Internet."

Because of that, perhaps it would've been better if I had got my review of this out a bit earlier, but that didn't happen. Sorry. So hopefully with this review I can convince a person or two to search it out and go see it in theaters soon or perhaps look out for it whenever it hits streaming or Redbox. Because I think this is well worth seeing. As far as the premise goes, female-led heist film is the most basic way to describe this. Although in terms of specifics, there is a lot more layers to this with several story arcs weaving through, a few of which I will completely avoid so that your experience won't be ruined by reading this review. In short, we start the film off with a criminal team consisting of Liam Neeson, Jon Bernthal, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo and Coburn Goss. But they're all here in this movie to go boom as the robbery that they are trying to pull off goes horribly wrong and they all explode in a tragic accident while trying to get away from the authorities. This causes all of their wives to become widows. One of said widows, played by Viola Davis, was married to Liam Neeson's character and shortly after he went boom, she gets threatened by the guy her husband just robbed, so to pay him off, she recruits the other widows to pull off the heist that their husbands were going to do next using some notes they left behind.

Again, that's the basic premise there. There's a lot going on here and I was spending a good portion of the first half of the movie trying to figure out how this was going to play. Turns out all of the story arcs weave together quite well, creating a film that's a fascinating character study with a ton of emotion included combined with one heck of an entertaining heist film that's actually rather intense because these ladies aren't experienced at all in this whole heist thing, so there's a lot of stakes involved. While some of the "Ocean's" movies are entertaining, what makes them a bit predictable is that they are a team of experts who have a meticulously planned heist, thus there's not as much stakes because you know they are going to succeed. "Widows," on the other hand, proves early on that they are willing to cast big name actors just to make them go boom really quick, so there's no guarantee that anyone makes it to the end of the movie alive. And since the ladies don't know what they're doing, their plan is based almost solely on some notes left behind and are motivated by the fact that they don't have much else to lose. Viola Davis is going to get her head blown in if she doesn't get the money in time, so she's desperately jumping in and trying something, knowing that it might not work.

Adding to that is the people chasing them down if they don't get the money are pretty intimidating as the movie's villains. This actually revolves around an election. Colin Farrell's character is trying to win re-election in a local Chicago political race and his opponent, Chester Manning, played by Brian Tyree Henry, is trying to unseat him. On the surface, Chester Manning seems like quite the standout gentleman, but he's the one who Liam Neeson's gang stole from and in private he is rather intimidating and manipulative. Running along as his sidekick in getting what he wants is Daniel Kaluuya's character. Daniel Kaluuya doesn't have much depth to him in the movie. He's just kinda messed up and evil, but he does a dang good job at it. Every time he's on screen, he just has an uncomfortable presence to him that makes you convinced whoever is in the room with him is going to die unless they meet his demands. This shows a bit of versatility with Daniel Kaluuya as he went from harmless victim in "Get Out" to crazy villain in "Widows," doing a solid job at both. So yeah, with these figures lurking around, I felt it was perfectly reasonable for Viola Davis, who is a bit of a morally ambiguous character herself, to get desperate and try to do what it takes to stay alive.

Propelling all of this forward are a handful of solid performances by our lead ladies, Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki and Cynthia Erivo. Starting off with Viola Davis, she puts on her Amanda Waller persona in this movie, which she pulled off quite convincingly in "Suicide Squad." She's far from being a psychotic criminal, but she's also not a perfect angel as she remained married to Liam Neeson despite him being the leader of the initial heist gang. She claimed innocence from all of that at the time, but she also didn't stop him or really condemn him. So when she's threatened if she doesn't get the $2 million real quick, it doesn't take much effort to decide to follow in her husband's footsteps. She plays a rough, intimidating leader as she chooses to recruit these other widows and lead them through this and she pulls this off really well. Michelle Rodriguez is Michelle Rodriguez in this movie. That's the best way to describe her. I learned to really like her via "LOST" and the many "Fast and Furious" movies, so I enjoyed her character. It's the same one she always plays, but that was fine for me. But Elizabeth Debicki was the fun one. She seems the most unsure of the bunch. The most likely to fail. But then she surprised by being a brutal, heavy-hitter when it was least expected.

The final character in the gang is Cynthia Erivo. She's actually not a widow. In fact, the fourth widow of the original bunch wasn't recruited by Viola Davis when it was learned that she had a newborn. So it was going to be the three of them. But Cynthia Erivo is Michelle Rodriguez's babysiter and she's recruited last second and winds up being the glue that holds them together with her quickness and speed. She might be more of an afterthought in terms of character progression, but she's a fun addition. Together all four of these ladies provide a great balance. I found myself really wanting them to succeed, but being legitimately nervous about their chances in this. In terms of the rest of the cast, I kinda laugh at the fact that there are so many huge names in this movie because a good portion of them add very little to the film. We have some of the greatest actors in the business playing small roles that could've been played by lesser known actors, but I think the reason for all this was advertising purposes and awards bait rather than actually needing all of them. It didn't negatively effect the movie for me. But I did find it a bit unnecessary. That honestly might be the biggest complaint I have of the movie, which is saying a lot about the quality of the film.

So yeah, when it comes to heist films, I generally find myself enjoying them, but the formula has been done so much that I think we've worn the genre out. That may be why I was negative on "Ocean's 8." There was zero creativity. Zero originality. I find myself bored and uninterested despite the fact that the ladies in the movie were having the time of their lives. And that's why I loved "Widows." I didn't even know it was a heist film until the buzz started to come alive a few weeks before its release. Going in expecting that, I find myself surprisingly invested because of the intensity and uncertainty that it brought to the genre. It took a genre that has become so predictable and made me question how everything was going to turn out, thus providing plenty of surprises along the way. I mean, the second half of this movie is a who different movie review that I refuse to even get into, but the basic word is that if we're going to do another heist film, let's dig a little deeper and come up with something that can add a bit of spice and creativity to genre and that's exactly what "Widows" does. I'm a bit sad that it's not doing well at the box office and isn't getting much awards buzz, but hopefully this will be a movie that will be remembered down the road. I'm going to give "Widows" a 9/10.