Widows

Movie 🎥 Review: “Widows". Critics gave it a 90% the users an 62%. Rated: R with a running time of 2 hrs and 9 mins with an IMDb of 7.5/10. Cast: Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Cynthia Erivo, Colin Farrell, Brian Tyree Henry, Daniel Kaluuya, Jacki Weaver, Carrie Coon, Robert Duvall, and Liam Neeson. 

A police shootout leaves four thieves dead during an explosive armed robbery attempt in Chicago. Their widows -- Veronica, Linda, Alice and Belle -- have nothing in common except a debt left behind by their spouses' criminal activities. Hoping to forge a future on their own terms, Veronica joins forces with the other three women to pull off a heist that her husband was planning.

Widows is a 2018 heist film directed by Steve McQueen from a screenplay by McQueen and Gillian Flynn, based upon the 1983 ITV series of the same name. The film was announced in March 2015, with Davis joining the cast in September 2016. The rest of the cast was added in the next several months, and filming began in Chicago in May 2017.

Widows premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, 2018, was released in the United Kingdom on November 6, 2018 and in the United States on November 16, by 20th Century Fox. The film received praise from critics for its direction, screenplay, editing, score and the performances of the cast, particularly Davis, Debicki and Kaluuya, and grossed $20 million worldwide.

The main premise of this movie is how the widows, Veronica, Alice and Linda, are forced to collect the money to repay their husband's debt. From there the women have to find their individual strength to survive especially when most of the men in their world are either cut-throat criminals or corrupt politicians. This story has far more to tell when you look at it under the surface.

Widows is thematically about how people move on and rebuild themselves in a broken society. The core group of women have had their lives be defined by their husbands' actions for better or for worse. From sexism, race relations, entitled privileges, politics to infidelity, director Steve McQueen is exploring so many of these subjects in his heist thriller.

In less capable hands, so many of these themes and messages could feel force-fed and overbearing but McQueen makes them engaging in every single scene he shoots. Scenes will cut from calm, quiet moments to establish the nature of the widow's late marriages to sudden bursts of violence, action and tension to get your heart racing. Along with shots filled with dark and cool, light color palettes, McQueen shows on screen how divided the world is between those who feel they deserve wealth and power and those are mistreated by it. And through this divided perception, the women begin to take ownership of their lives and reassess what their marriages were really built on.

The film moves a little slow-paced in the very beginning, but quickly recovers and the twisting turning outcomes will thrill you to the very end. I enjoyed watching the action with the star cast and was thoroughly entertained. This film may not be for everyone but I’m thinking it will get an Oscar nod and you might just miss out if you don’t see it.