Widow Maker

We were pretty psyched to see Widows (2018), based mostly on the cast. Can’t say we were disappointed.

It starts with the end of a heist gone wrong, intercut with scenes of Viola Davis and Liam Neeson making love in a clean modern apartment. Neeson and his gang are massacred by the police during their getaway. Through flashbacks we meet the heisters and their wives. Michelle Rodriguez runs a store specializing in quinceanera clothes. Her husband takes money from her. Elizabeth Debicki’s husband knocks her around. Carrie Coon’s husband just ignores her. Now, they are widows.

It turns out the money belonged to Brian Tyree Henry, a black gangster who is going legit and running for alderman. His opponent is Colin Farrell, son of Robert Duvall, who has held the office forever. Henry needs money for his run, and knows it was Neeson who robbed him, so he gives his widow Davis a month to come up with the money.

She has a her husband’s notebooks that detail a $5 million heist that will get her free. So she contacts the other widows, and they plan the heist. She has the plans. She makes Debicki the driver, until she finds out she can’t drive. The scene where she buys the van has just a touch of Angel’s Revenge. Rodriguez buys the guns, and ropes her babysitter, Cynthia Erivo (the lovely singer in Bad Times at the El Royale) in as driver. Coon didn’t show up, and good for her.

There’s a little bit of humor, a lot of action, a great cast, a few twists, and a sweet ending. I haven’t seen any other movies by director Steve McQueen, but this looks like it might be his first action film. It was definitely fun, but I was a little disappointed - it was a bit too much of popcorn movie. It’s possible that there was more going on than I got, or he could have just been making a fun crowd pleaser - like Spike Lee’s Inside Man. If so, it worked. If it was supposed to be more, well, it had Viola Davis, who is indomitable.

In conclusion, one of the bits was when they couldn’t get the safe open, and it turned out that the paper the combination was written on was upside down. The joke is, the number was “86198”, which reads the same either way. At least, I assume it was a joke.