Widows

British art-house virtuoso Steve McQueen (Hunger, Shame, 12 Years a Slave) makes his first foray into mainstream commercial action with Widows, based on a 1983 British miniseries of the same name. Viola Davis heads up an impressive cast in this thriller about a group of Chicago women who, after their criminal husbands are killed in a botched job, decide to attempt a heist of their own.  McQueen teamed up with Gillian Flynn to write the screenplay, but unlike Flynn’s pulpy, psychological thriller Gone Girl, the hokey twists and predictable yet outlandish turns in this film aren’t its main raison d’être. Widows means to be a serious sociological drama. It takes full advantage of its Chicago setting to advance subplots and subtext around gender, race, class, electoral politics and local-machine governance. 

McQueen’s penchant for exposing viewers to acts of great physical and mental anguish, both self-induced and inflicted on others, works to a far lesser degree here that in his previous work. The truth behind human cruelty gets a little lost when employing amped-up genre tropes to convey it—especially amped-up genre tropes that require such a healthy suspension of disbelief. 

Widows bursts at the seams with solid but underdeveloped performances. Its miniseries roots are clear, as there are too many characters for a 2+ hour movie, and the most interesting people, the widows themselves, don’t get enough screen time. Thus the big heist comes off as unsatisfying, and Davis doesn’t have a chance to make her Veronica Rawlings into much more than an imposing figure with a backstory meant to fill in all the details. It’s a surprising disappointment that the disposable Ocean’s 8 would rank higher on my 2018 list than Widows, but ultimately, this heist picture gets foiled by its ambitious pretentions.