Widows 2018

Widows Peak!

A fast moving jumble of a heist film set in the windy city of Chicago. I was surprised by how good this little deep dish nugget was maybe because it was directed by the fine director Steve McQueen who is not known for following the rules or sticking to one kind of movie. This is a guy who did an epic civil war drama, a small film about an Irish rebel's hunger strike, a film about a sex addict living and working in New York City, A moving film about the London Blitz, A television series about the West Indian community living in London from 1969 to 1982 and this hearty crime film that I saw the other night without knowing what was coming.

There is nothing new under the sun or moon when it comes to crime and heist films, I've seen many of them beginning with The Great Train Robbery the famous silent film. I like this genre so I was looking forward to seeing it, but not expecting much. I was nicely surprised by how good it was. Sure its flawed but what isn't (check out the state of our country) and besides the cast was to swoon and die for. Headed by the great Viola Davis as the lead widow whose recently deceased dead criminal husband has left her in the lurch big time. This lurch as to do with stolen money that the dead husband played by a low key Liam Neesom stole from rough black criminals that don't fool around. She takes things into her own very capable hands and reaches out to the other women left in tight situations because of their hubby's poor handling of the heist that went bad.

The other widows are well cast and played by Elizabeth Debicki,and Michelle Rodriguez who agree to come in on the plan that Viola is hatching. One of the widows played by Carrie Coon ops out for reasons I will not disclose. All the widows are abused either mentally or physically by their late criminal hubbys and it falls on Davis to come up with a plan to do a heist to get millions of dollars so she can return a lot of the moola to the head black criminal who is also a shady politician played well by Brian Tyree Henry. There really isn't anything new here, we've seen it all before as I said, but McQueen brings a good new look to this aging genre that still has legs. The mixture of crooked politics and crime is also nothing and here McQueen falters a bit using the same old. The older corrupt patriarchal politician father played by Robert Duvall doing what he usually does. Hamming it up. His son who is following his corrupt path is played by Colin Farrell with a good accent and is on the wrong path to corrupt political power. Again nothing new here. Also in the packed cast is Daniel Kaluuya very evil, Jackie Weaver as a nasty mom to one of the widows, Cynthia Ervio and Lukas Haas. I can't recall what other films came out in 2018 and what I did or didn't like, but I would put this one on the list of films that I did like in 2018.