Widows - Tödliche Witwen

This film version is based on the ITV series from 1983 that was written by Lynda La Plante.

In Chicago, Harry Rawlings (Liam Neeson) heist has gone wrong. His gang is killed and he is burned to a cinder when stealing two million dollars from a ruthless gangster Jamal Manning (Brian Tyree Henry) who is also running for political office. He is running against smarmy upstart Jack Mulligan (Colin Farrell) who is corrupt just like his father Tom Mulligan (Robert Duvall) who is stepping down from politics due to ill health.

Jamal and his brother Jatemme Manning (Daniel Kaluuya) put pressure on Harry's widow Veronica (Viola Davis) to liquidate all her assets and pay them back.

Harry has left behind a notebook with plans for his next job. Veronica teams up with the other widows from her late husband's gang to pull off the heist and pay off the Mannings. The Mannings are after the notebook as well.

Steve McQueen has gone for a muscular reworking set in Chicago but it also becomes flabby with too many right on messages ranging from political corruption, female exploitation to a racist cop needlessly killing a young black man. The political angle was overkill and got in the way of the main story, at times making the widows secondary characters in their own movie.

Having seen the original series of Widows when it was broadcast. It was a trailblazer, a heist film featuring women and written by a woman with a big plot twist. The remake maintains the twist but is nowhere as good as the original show.

It would be hard NOT to recommend this film simply based on the top of the line actors here. Seeing Viola Davis and Liam Neeson as passionate lovers might be worth the whole film. Michelle Rodriguez for once doesn't play the Michelle Rodriguez character (someone else does); you might almost mistake her for America Ferrara initially. Duval plays in a familiar register but he does it well; Farrell is workmanlike but in an unfamiliar role. Etc.

As for the story, it is wound tight for most of the film, including scenes of violence worthy of (and not always far from) Tarantino. There is also a theme - almost overdone these days - of women discovering themselves through transgression. And there are some very sexy scenes.

Strangely though, the film goes seriously off-track at the end, almost as if the screenwriters ended up in a hurry or just didn't care anymore. Except for one applause-worthy moment, the ending feels cursory and leaves some pretty obvious questions unanswered. Which is downright strange for such an otherwise tightly written film. To put it another way, for much of the film it's 8 or 9 star, then in the close it's 3 or 4.

I'm surprised honestly some of the high-powered talent here didn't demand some rewrites. As it is, you'll probably enjoy much of it (unless you can't stomach violence) and certainly if you're the kind of viewer who just lives for a few good moments between real pros, you've got them here. But it's an incomplete experience in the end.

01/24/2019 Immediate viewer immersion is guaranteed. A couple of slow spots, building the storylines foundation, but once that's done, your hooked. I really enjoyed this easy to watch movie, a pleasant change from the standard fare we're forced to watch. Bon Appetit

Steve McQueen is known for icy detachment and pretension. Gillian Flynn is known for bombast and snarky genre reversals. It's an unlikely pairing, and it looks like everyone wants to come out to play. The film is packed with Grade-A actors. But what do any of them have to do? True to genre, the film uses bursts of violence to suggest stakes. This is, in theory, a heist movie. But "Widows" wants to be more, and the heist takes a backseat to nearly two hours of swamp. "Widows" wants to insist it's "about something", dragging the audience through empty melodrama and papery political nonsense to arrive a convoluted nothing. Its snail's-pace gaslighting; a beautifully photographed, laughably fragile farce of girl-power that for all if its portentous trappings reduces its characters down to neat tropes. After all, it's a heist movie. But the more these characters talk the more we realize we know nothing about them aside from their victimhood. "Widows" wants to imagine a handful of Carmela Sopranos as avenging ronin who light candles for the dead - virgin wh*res complicit in their husband's crimes and doomed to fulfill their dreadful mission, but the film seems to be all window-dressing. There's nothing behind the curtain to suggest this movie learned much from its obvious model - Mann's "Heat."

The caliber of director and cast got this film a lot of attention, and the critical response was mostly positive. On the face of it, you can see why, because it takes a generally popular genre of twists and turns and 'one big jobs' and delivers it in a much less 'capery' way than is normal. The characters are people, they feel and fear, hurt and lose, and they carry a lot with them from previous events in life. So it is a genre film with weight, and it was engaging in the way it did that. However the parts that engage all produce the feeling that the film should be better as a whole than it actually is.

The performances and the quality of the casting is a big part of this. They all bring a lot to their roles, and they make the material feel better by virtue of what they do. This creates the problem that the material is actually not that strong; it is still a genre film and it plays like one when you get below the surface - which reminds us why this genre is popular while also exposing weakness in this film. The reason most of these type of things are played a bit over the top, or as a caper, is that the spectacle or fun of it means the viewer allows it silliness in the plot; here though the events of the film didn't get that forgiveness because it told me it was being more serious and real. Related to this a little is the feeling that the film tries to cram too much in regarding characters and threads - so most supporting elements feel rushed or crammed in.

It is still a good watch though, with McQueen's approach adding value in the same way as the heavyweight cast all do; however I'm not sure the quality links to the film as a whole, and I came away from it feeling that in any given moment the film was being better than it actually was. An interesting problem though.