Stars: Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Cynthia Erivo, Colin Farrell, Brian Tyree Henry, Daniel Kaluuya, Jacki Weaver, Carrie Coon, Robert Duvall, Liam Neeson
Director: Steve McQueen
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars
(Spoilers Ahead) The film focuses on the lives of three widows whose husbands, members of Harry Rawlings's (Neeson) mob, recently died. Harry's widow, Veronica (Davis), is a stoic woman who used to represent the teacher's union, and seems intent to know as little about her husband's dealings as possible, though you get the sense that she knew roughly what was happening and just didn't care. The two have a seemingly strong marriage, but as the movie progresses, in flashbacks we understand that it was more complicated than that, with their son dying at the hands of a white police officer, and them being increasingly isolated from each other in the years since. Harry's death resulted in roughly 3 million dollars being burned up, and the two men he stole it from Jamal Manning (Kaluuya), a candidate for alderman, and his sadistic brother Jatemme (Kaluuya), threaten to kill her if they don't get the money. She recruits two other widows whose husbands died in the same sting that killed Harry named Linda (Rodriguez) and Alice (Debicki), and they plan on finishing Harry's next heist, robbing from the home of Jamal Manning's opponent Jack Mulligan (Farrell), who is looking to succeed his father Tom (Duvall) as City Alderman, with his eyes on one day becoming the Mayor of Chicago.
That's quite the thick plot, and the film, clocking in at 129 minutes, might get its best compliment from me in that it makes total sense and doesn't meander too much as we get to the eventual showdown. There's little excess here, and McQueen has assembled the sort of ensemble you can only get if your last film won Best Picture. Seriously-these are some of the best actors working (I haven't even mentioned Carrie Coon, Cynthia Erivo, & Jacki Weaver, all of whom are also on the call sheet), and you don't pull together thespians like this without some terrific work being had. Debicki has gotten the lion's share of the kudos, and it's partially because this might be her most mainstream effort yet, going toe-to-toe with someone like Viola Davis, but it's probably just because she's sensational. There's this great scene where she has to play opposite Weaver as her mother, trying to hold back an array of emotions, while the wrong ones keep sputtering out, and I loved the way she seems to be both a vulnerable person and someone who could take on the likes of Davis's Veronica. Kaluuya gets the showiest part in the cast as Jatemme, a monstrous close-to-cameo role where his huge eyes and deliberate line readings result in genuine fear whenever he's on screen, but Debicki probably is the one who will get the most offers out of this film, and considering I've been cheering her on for years now, that's reason enough to see Widows.
The problem for McQueen's film is that it is marketed as an art house film, but it's frequently too conventional for such things. That seems to be a problem for box office in recent years (look at something like mother! for another example), but he'd have been better off selling this as a smart action movie, which is what it is. The further he delves into the marriage of Harry (who, spoiler alert again, is in fact not dead but shacking up with Carrie Coon and their infant son) and Veronica, the less we know about our leading lady. Davis is a great orator and speech-giver as Veronica, but I'll admit that this felt more like her just showing off than finding a depth in her character. I had a similar problem with parts of her performance in Fences, with her feeling too theatrical in her delivery, but chalked that up to her having played the part in the Cort Theater and it just came naturally after inhabiting the role for so long. Widows doesn't have that excuse. Davis can be mesmerizing, but I left knowing nothing about Veronica, to the point where the ending makes little sense (she sees Alice and smiles...but did she even like Alice? And why-they hated each other right up until the end of the movie?). There's stuff on the page that Davis could have taken advantage of, but her marriage feels paint-by-numbers, with her grief only informing certain checks on the film (I loved the way she brought her dog with her everywhere after Jatemme threatened him, not wanting to lose another loved one), but it feels like something was cut or missing on the editing room floor. Like I said, these actors are too good to be left with a bad movie, which this certainly isn't, but it's also hard not to feel disappointed that considering the talent on-display here (Gillian Flynn wrote it!) that we didn't end up with an indisputable classic.
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