With a star-studded cast including Viola Davis, Liam “Neesums”, Daniel Kaluuya and Bryan Tyree Henry, Steve McQueen’s Widows has the pedigree to be a pulse-pounding thriller to end off the year with a bang. But every time the film approached something great, there’s a left turn that kills all its momentum.
Windows stars Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez and Elizabeth Debicki as three widows of criminal husbands who have left them in an unexpected debt to some dangerous people. Now they must take matters into their own hands in order to get out of the mess in which their husbands left them.
Steve McQueen co-wrote and directed a story that has the outlines of a hard-hitting heist crime drama. He uses powerful imagery to make statements on how the underprivileged are left with the dregs left behind by the more powerful, whether it’s the 1% leaving the poor communities of Chicago in inescapable conditions, or the criminal husbands leaving their not-entirely-ignorant wives with grave circumstances. With all the grand importance of these messages, Widows forgets to pay attention to the details that give commentary a coherent focus.
The movie does not know what it wants to be. It sets up a thrilling caper, but then has a random scene, out-of-place line of dialogue, or stock storyline that feels plucked out of a romance drama. The narrative was choppy and often left the audience with more questions than answers. The ensemble cast was put together with loads of talent, but their storylines didn’t mesh well to push the collective plots forward.
With so many different stories to cover you could see that some characters’ arcs were left on the editing room floor. Tonally, the movie wants to empower the leads, but the second one scene successfully does so the next contradicts their motivations. Viola Davis, Bryan Tyree Henry and Daniel Kaluuya try to elevate the uneven writing they are given, but everyone else are dragged down by the material. Cynthia Erivo is the one performance that carried weight from beginning to end, but she isn’t introduced until almost halfway through the movie. By that time, you may already have checked out from the script and characters’ numerably questionable decisions.
In Widows, Robert Duvall’s character is a slightly delirious old man that is trapped in his historical power and can’t see the mistakes that are flashing in front of his face. The movie falls into the same unfortunate formula, relying on the strength of McQueen, Davis, and Kaluuya’s names (amongst others). It’s a grand statement with flashes of style and substance, but stumbles one too many times on its way to telling you about itself. I am giving Widows 6.5/10 Viola Davis snot-filled cries (she does those so well).