The stakes are high in Steve McQueen’s latest project. That
said, when have the stakes never been high in his films? Director of Hunger, Shame, and 12 Years a Slave (the
latter earned him an Oscar and BAFTA for Best Film), McQueen’s body of work has
seen him tackle Irish hunger strikes, sex addiction, and nineteenth-century
slavery. In his latest, Widows, three
women get together to pull off a heist which will, quite literally, save their
lives. And it’s brilliant.
Widows introduces
us to big-time criminal Harry Rawlins (played by Liam Neeson), who meticulously
plans and records every past and future heist in a secret notebook. Harry bites
off a bigger job than he can chew, however, and steals $2m from Jamal Manning (Brian
Tyree Henry), a crime boss who just happens to be running for local elections.
The job goes wrong and Harry and his team are killed, leaving behind his wife Veronica
(Viola Davis) to deal with the consequences when Manning comes looking for his
money. Veronica has little choice but to take on Harry’s next planned job
herself, and recruits the widows of Harry’s gang mates to help her.
What ensues is a taut and thrilling heist film with a
compelling narrative, stellar performances, and enough grit to winter-proof the
M5. Jamal Manning is running for public office in a depressed and forgotten
neighbourhood of Chicago: predominantly black and plagued by unemployment and a
lack of opportunity. Running against him is Jack Mulligan (played by Colin
Farrell), a wealthy politician who enjoys just a bit of nepotistic good
fortune. Publicly, Mulligan and Manning plan to conduct a fair democratic
battle, but in private, both are linked to the criminal world of Harry Rawlins.
The plot sees Harry’s wife assemble her team of widows in
fairly conventional heist-movie fashion. Michelle Rodriguez (most famous for
the Fast & Furious franchise) plays one of the widows, left with two
children and a dress shop which has been repossessed by a man to whom her
husband owed gambling debts. Elizabeth Debicki completes the team, a naïve
young woman who turns – at the suggestion of her vampish mother – to escorting so
she can pay her way through life. Veronica gathers the group together (in the
rather unlikely venue of a sauna) to brief them of the danger in which they find
themselves after their husbands’ deaths, and to convince them to help her pull
off the heist.
As Veronica, Viola Davis again asserts herself as a
cinematic tour-de-force, displaying both vulnerability and brute strength of
will as she negotiates her way through her post-Harry life. Veronica’s pain of
losing not only her husband but also her son to police violence is hard to
watch, but ultimately creates a character with whom the audience can empathise
to a great extent. Davis provides the strongest of anchors for the other cast
members to shine, and both Debicki and Rodriguez give fine performances.
McQueen (together with Gone
Girl screenwriter Gillian Flynn) crafts a tensile script which explores a
whole range of affecting social and personal issues, ranging from grief to
corruption and racism. To be sure, the heist is the central driver of the plot:
the actual sequence is shot with a thrilling tempo and is scored with an
unrelenting, yet subtle, score from everybody’s favourite film composer, Hans
Zimmer. Elsewhere, the level of violence is shocking, and yet it feels
appropriate as it raises the stakes for the characters and, therefore, makes
their actions all the more convincing. Crime boss Manning has his brother to do
much of his murderous dirty work, played by Daniel Kaluuya in a suitably
unhinged performance.
Under the direction of Steve McQueen, Widows becomes more than just a heist thriller. It engages with
troubling ideas and issues which are rendered with sensitivity and power by its
actors. McQueen’s muscular and intense style works wonders to create a dark
world where women – full of tenacity and strength – are given the chance to
determine their own fate.
Clapperboard Rating: * * * * *