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Widows
****
Dir: Steve McQueen
Starring: Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez
(USA, 15, 2hrs 9mins)
A remake of an ITV Lynda LaPlante series from the 80s, excellent though it was, seems hardly the material Steve McQueen would turn his hand to next.
Director and artist McQueen has previously made Hunger, about IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands; and Shame, about a sex addict; 12 Years a Slave, his Oscar-winning film confronted the brutalities of slavery. Widows, on paper, seems like lightweight fluff in comparison.
It’s not, but it is his most commercial venture to date, a tightly wound thriller with a political agenda, dealing with class, gender and gun violence, as well as being a good ol’ fashioned heist film. The action is relocated from London to Chicago with Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki and Carrie Coon playing the widows of armed robbers who were killed on the job. Each member of the gang brings their own set of problems; they’re all looking for a way to make ends meet, appeasing their husband’s ‘victims’ and controlling their own destinies.
The ragtag band are forced to take on board the break-in their husbands were planning in the hope of solving their problems with Cynthia Erivo joining the ranks as Rodriguez’s babysitter. Davis’ husband (played by Liam Neeson) dies owing a $2 million debt to Bryan Tyree Henry’s crimelord and his scary sidekick, a vicious Daniel Kaluuya. The axe will fall on her if she cannot fix this. Davis is superb as the wronged woman leading her accomplices into mortal danger in a gripping exercise in crime genre. Robert Duvall and Colin Farrell appear as dodgy father-son politicians out to save their futures whatever the corruption.
All these elements mesh together in a neo-noir with a social conscience. As well as delivering a cracking thriller, McQueen and fellow screenwriter Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl) use the women’s plight to examine deeper ills within society, making Widows a timely, intelligent and outstandingly acted heist drama.
words Keiron Self
Out now in cinemas