It’s
been roughly five years since British writer-director Steve McQueen’s Academy
Award winning film 12 Years a Slave catapulted
the Hunger and Shame provocateur from the art house circuit into the mainstream
filmgoing consciousness. In between that
time we saw the icy yet consistently experimental filmmaker dabble in varying
projects including but not limited to an ornate television commercial for
Burberry photographed in 65mm film and a music video for Kanye West’s All Day.
After the dissolution of what would have been a limited event series for
HBO called Codes of Conduct, McQueen
refocused his sights on a far more commercial project which would satisfy the
filmmaker artistically while living up to the demands of the box office: Widows.
Loosely
based on crime author Lynda La Plante’s 1983 British ITV television series of
the same name while being transposed to modern day with the help of Gone Girl author and screenwriter
Gillian Flynn, Widows opens on a
botched heist which claims the lives of the four armed robbers, ultimately leaving
the widowed wives of Veronica (Viola Davis), Linda (Michelle Rodriguez) and
Alice (Elizabeth Debicki) to answer to a disgruntled crime boss with a hefty
debt to pay off. As businesses are shut
down and death threats are issued to the surviving trio by mercenary thugs
including a standout villain played by Get
Out’s Daniel Kaluuya, the widows elect to take matters into their own hands
and complete the unfinished heist left behind by their dead husbands before its
too late.
A
solid and frequently thrilling genre picture with a gifted filmmaker behind it,
Widows functions as both a complex
and enriching ensemble character drama as well as an old fashioned popcorn
entertaining echoing the likes of Michael Mann’s Heat or Spike Lee’s Inside
Man. Featuring a wealth of solid
performances including brief but memorable surprises provided by Liam Neeson
and the great Robert Duvall, the film is an actor’s piece as rendered by
McQueen’s keen audiovisual sense. As
with his previous works, inference and implication thanks to off camera sound
effects and images lead viewers into scenarios and situations which we’re not
entirely certain of where they’re going.
A character will begin speaking with his/her face aimed at the camera
and it isn’t until we start to hear other characters speaking that we gather
our bearings as to where McQueen is taking us.
Reuniting
with longtime cinematographer Sean Bobbitt, some of the most remarkable scenes
in the film (much like his 2011 film Shame)
concern tense conversations without always facing the actors. The best shot in the film involves a
political candidate (Colin Farrell) and his assistant who wear smiles while
campaigning only to air out their true grievances about their respective
professions with the camera strapped to the front hood of their car in one
unbroken long take. The effect of
affixing a camera to a vehicle is a common one yet I can’t recall the last film
I saw that used the technique quite like this.
It’s a remarkable and most unexpected sequence that will tickle
adventurous film buffs pink and cements McQueen’s reputation as one of the more
innovative filmmakers working today.
With
only Hans Zimmer’s prototypical action thriller score ala his earlier Chris
Nolan pictures working against it, fans of McQueen as well as the old-fashioned
heist thriller will find much to enjoy with Widows. Though I was a tad dismayed McQueen didn't reunite with teammate Michael Fassbender who led his previous three pictures, the film still managed to leave ample room for the director’s trademark unflinching
provocation, confrontational approach to graphic violence and social commentary
regarding the interpersonal dynamics of the characters without becoming preachy
or patronizing. Widows unlike other Hollywood heist thrillers largely led by female
cast members is startlingly realistic with the three widows approaching the
prospect of robbery with fear, apprehension and confusion rather than the
typical overconfident cool seen in the likes of the recently released Ocean’s 8. As such, Widows
represents the art-house director’s first true foray into Hollywood
filmmaking while never losing sight of his artistic trademarks.
--Andrew Kotwicki