Widows (2018) - Movie Review

The phrase "honour amongst thieves" pretty much serves as the underlying mood behind most if not all heist films. Most of their main drive comes portraying thievery as a competitive sport. And with the placement in the realms of sport comes the preceding fixation on technical skills and strategy, with all the intensive choreography and smooth-as-butter timing that goes with it. There’s also an underlying aspect of revenge, or at the very least retribution, attached to a lot of them, with the heist being the means to get even with someone who doesn’t play fair.

I bring all this up because this particular heist flick is a marked departure from all of that. It occasionally mingles with the action trappings of its sub-genre, but this isn’t something that could easily be sold as “heart-racing”. Instead, rather than focusing on the specific hows regarding pulling off the heist itself, it focuses on why these particular people are doing it. And the titular Widows aren’t doing it for fun or as a means to get one up on their opponents; they’re doing it because they have to. Veronica (Viola Davis), Linda (Michelle Rodriguez) and Alice (Elizabeth Debicki) are each in a position where they have no choice but to secure the money, as a means of paying off the varying debts that their late husbands left them with.

This setup allows co-writer Gillian Flynn to flex more of that gender political muscle that she showed back with Gone Girl, with this film also delving into gender dynamics and how abuse shapes relationships. However, the sociocultural background of the setting, both taking place in and primarily shot in Chicago, she and co-writer/director Steve McQueen go one step further and tap into the control systems that allow that abuse to happen. How the ruling class uses the social issues of the people not as a means to push for societal growth but for their own, often forcing people into a position where their only means of income is derived from… less-than-legal pursuits.

It highlights a recurring notion in the realms of social activism, that classism, rather than racism, is a key factor of societal oppression, and that combined with the gender favouritism in the plot setup shows why these women are forced to pick up the slack for those who lied, attacked and ultimately fucked them over.

The film’s script definitely has some brains to it, mapping out a lot of contributing factors that keep people in these cycles of forced action, from the government to the police to the church. However, where the film falters is down to the presentation of all that. While the acting is quite strong across the board, with Davis in particular giving a very strong central performance, Steve McQueen’s direction doesn’t end up giving them the best space to work in.

He sticks to his tried-and-tested formula of extended camera takes (courtesy of his frequent DOP Sean Bobbitt) and highly methodical pacing, and in his other films, that does some good. Not all that much, since his sense of pacing is profoundly sluggish and manages to make the soul-crushing practice of slavery seem dull through his lens, but good nonetheless. Here, he basically highlights how much of a better pick David Fincher was for Flynn’s style of writing, as Fincher’s clinical voyeurism allowed the scathing tone of the script to shine through.

What we get in this film is a unshakable feeling that while all the right pieces are in attendance and there is most definitely a lot to be unearthed from the premise and its core themes, it’s not being helmed by someone who is able to bring them all together into something cohesive. Or, to put it more bluntly, something that is able to consistently engage.