Special Exhibit: WIDOWS

I haven't posted anything on the Special Exhibit section during the last two weeks, but since I shared my opinion on every Oscar movie, I decided those counted as a mega-recommendation of sorts. Today, I'm back with the format of one individual product each weekend.

Year: 2018

Duration: 130 minutes.

Where to Watch: Amazon Prime

There's no doubt Steve McQueen is a talented filmmaker (today I won't be talking about the legendary actor, but the other Steve McQueen, the British director). Even in the works I don't enjoy (Shame, about a sex addict, was a film I could never emphasize with, and I thought the Small Axe series was uneven), there's a well-crafted style, no doubt cultivated during his years as a visual artist, that immediately catches the eye, even at those moments when you normally would want to look away, like much of the prisoners' plight in Hunger or the whipping of Lupita Nyong'o in 12 Years a Slave).

Not as universally appealing as his Oscar-winning slavery epic, McQueen next film, Widows, has fallen into relative obscurity, despite being yet another accomplished piece. Based on a British TV series from the early 80's, this heist thriller was given new life with many of the filmmaker's stylistic signatures, and yet it feels completely different from anything he has done before.

The titular widows are played by Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez and Elizabeth Debicki (the whole cast is incredible), and they were married to the members of a gang of bank robbers who were killed during their last job. Davis' character has inherited a key from her late husband (Liam Neeson), and she discovers a notebook detailing the plan for a multimillionaire robbery. The mark: Jack Mulligan (Colin Farrell), a politician running for office. Mulligan's rival in the election happens to be the mobster for whom the bank robbers used to work for (Brian Tyree Henry), and who is now demanding that the widows pay the money he lost.

The women, who're barely making ends meet due to their changed lifestyle, come together to carry on with the notebook's heist. They are joined by a babysitter (Cynthia Erivo) because they need a getaway driver, and they continue what their deceased husbands started. Of course, things are not what they seem, and there's plenty of twists and turns that will keep you entertained, even though one of the few flaws of the picture is that it feels a bit overlong.

The superb cast is rounded by recent Oscar winner Daniel Kaluuya, Jackie Weaver, Carrie Coon, Robert Duvall, Jon Bernthal and Lukas Haas, with a score by Hans Zimmer and a screenplay that McQueen co-wrote with novelist Gillian Flynn (she authored both the books and the screenplays for Gone Girl and Sharp Objects).

Every actor is very good in their role, but the standouts are Viola Davis (not surprising at all, particularly since she's pretty much the lead) and Elizabeth Debicki, who gets the most interesting role in the film and makes the most of it.

The direction is on par with McQueen's previous work, with the mood and tension particularly well-thought. Unlike some of his other films, it doesn't delve too much on racial issues (though they're still present), or heavy topics like Hunger and Shame, but the fact that it focuses on the female point of view still makes it thematically relevant and worthy of his filmography. If you lose that from sight it might be simply because you're not used to seeing something as "pulpy" coming from this kind of filmmaker.

But then again, the end product is that thrilling kind of film you only get when you have a stylized auteur such as McQueen making a genre movie, yet never selling out his personal brand.