Widows (Steve McQueen, 2018)

After their respective husbands are killed following their latest heist, a group of widows (Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, and Cynthia Erivo) have to work together to repay the debt the dead men owe an unscrupulous crime lord who is running for public office.

Working against a literal deadline, the widows will have to go above and beyond to pay the debt and escape with their lives.

Tense, funny and filled with great performances, Widows was one of the best studio releases of the last few years. After years of CG-filled blockbusters, here is a genre movie for adults, fronted by a great cast. It is like a throwback to the studio thrillers of the nineties.

The opening sequences which introduce the title characters is terrific - cross-cutting between the couple's last day together and the husband's final moments fleeing from the cops.

Race and gender are foregrounded throughout the film - this is a world based on power and transaction, and all the widows are struggling to survive with this dynamic. Manning (Brian Tyree Henry) sees Mulligan (Colin Farrell) as holding the power he needs - he sees the political system in Chicago for what it is - the ultimate marketplace, with Mulligan as the custodian of ultimate transactional power.

In one standout moment, McQueen captures the divide between the different Chicagos in a single shot - Mulligan's car ride from an event in an empty lot in a black neighbourhood to his palatial estate.

The movie is a really strong when it focuses on the power of transaction in the widows' former relationships. Even (SPOILERS) Veronica comes to realise that she is considered expendable.

I found the movie to be most effective in showing the widows figuring out how to get out of their predicament. Because they have had to negotiate a world dictated by men's beliefs and desires, they are aware of how to beat them at their own game. 

While men are shown plotting and killing, the movie is filled with scenes of women working, raising kids or planning the heist. The impression the film creates is of a world in which women required to do everything. In order to survive they will need to play the men at their own game.

The election that drives the plot highlights the limits of American democracy - if Manning wins, it may mean an improvement for some people in the community, but what about people like the widows?

The acting across the board is really strong:

As Veronica, wife of Liam Neeson's Harry, Viola Davis is the deceptively calm eye in the storm. She is barely holding it together. Underneath, she is a raw nerve of grief and betrayal. Michelle Rodriguez’s Linda is a hardworking woman who has had to carry her parasitic partner. Elizabeth Debicki is Alice, an abused woman who gains independence after her abuser dies in the heist. The final member of the team is Belle, played by Cynthia Erivo. Belle is Linda's babysitter who is trying to make more money for her own daughter.

One of the best actors of his generation, Brian Tyree Henry is instantly convincing in whatever role he plays. He is also great as Jamal Manning, the gangster who the Widows are pitted against. Both Goliath and David, he is complicated figure who is both a threat to the title characters and someone engaged in a broader strategy to build political power in Chicago. 

While Henry is good, the real standout villain of the piece is Manning's brother Jatemme, played by Daniel Kaluuya.

There is a type of villain where no rules of morality or decorum apply - a character who is literally capable of saying or doing anything. As Manning's unpleasant enforcer, Kaluuya epitomises this sense of unpredictability. While there are many antagonists in Widows, Kaluuya is the most overtly threatening - the camera prowls around him, like a terrified bystander. He is so present in his scenes, he almost pitches the movie into a more conventional direction. We are shown repeated sequences of his character wrecking ruin, and the usual expectation would be that he would be the widows' ultimate obstacle. The resolution to his character feels like a minor flub - an example of the movie's inversion of tropes does not come off.

Colin Farrell is one of those actors cursed with the looks of a leading man. Colourless in a would-be blockbuster like Total Recall or Swat, he is at his best playing men with horrific flaws. Mulligan is a man who thinks he is trying to escape his past but he is all to willing to go back to his old tricks to win. There is an adolescent quality to Mulligan - he is still a boy trying to get out from under his father's thumb.

Sometimes a genre picture tries to consciously about something and falls flat. It is a hard balance to strike - you can end up with a movie that is at war with itself, its genre conventions blunted by a desire for greater realism; or its subtext neutered or trivialised by the (assumed) need to fulfil genre expectations.

When I first watched Widows on its initial release, these two components did not feel seperate - they felt felt of a piece. On a second viewing, I began to see an imbalance. The movie is still good, but I am not sure that it manages to balance its themes and genre as well as I initially thought.

I am looking forward to watching it again - it might warrant another review...

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