It’s a good time for films about women, with strong feminist and me2 messages. Some of these films are made by women, most of them allow wonderful opportunities for actresses to play consistent roles, in a quantity and with a quality like never in the history of Hollywood. Some genres are blessed with feminist variants of usually macho themes, and one good example this year is the heist movies genre. 2018 brought to screens two blockbusters of the genre: Gary Ross‘s ‘Ocean’s Eight‘ and ‘Widows‘ directed by Steve McQueen. The genre may be the same, but the styles and the approaches are completely different. In almost any respect ‘Widows‘ is what ‘Ocean’s Eight‘ is not.
Both films are about a group of women engaging in what can be considered on screen and in real life as a man-only endeavor – planning and executing a sophisticated robbery. The heroines in ‘Widows‘ are not, however, criminals that happen to be women, but rather a bunch of widows whose husbands were in the robberies business and got killed during a last unfortunate coup. Instead of being left to their sorrows the widows will have to execute the next well planned job of the late husbands in order to pay their debts to a gangster turned politician. The background of the action is the city of Chicago, described as a hell of crime and corruption at all levels, up to the politicians involved in the next round of local elections. One way to describe the story in the film is to say it’s the story of ordinary women becoming sophisticated gangsters, taking over the profession and learning the skills of robbery mastered by their husbands.
This story could have been told in many ways and the principal reason I was not that enthusiastic about the film is that film director Steve McQueen did not seem to decide what kind of film he wanted to make. It’s certainly not a light comedy or a heist movie made mainly for the fun of following the ingenuous planning and execution, although it flirts with both genres at various moments. The action elements are not missing but they are not terribly spectacular or very inventive. The focus seems to have been more on the psychology of the characters faced not only with the truth about the way their characters made for a good living, but also obliged to replace them in crime. Fine acting by Viola Davis , Michelle Rodriguez, and Elizabeth Debicki support this part which is the best in the film. It is however the crime intrigue that is surprisingly weak, taking into account that it’s based on a script written by Gillian Flynn which was inspired by a novel by Lynda La Plante. I would have expected less abysmal holes and more credibility from a script written by such talents in the world of the American crime story novels. Robert Duvall, Liam Neeson and Colin Farrell contribute with their talents in supporting roles. For once the female characters take precedence, but this is not sufficient for avoiding of ‘Widows‘ to become a movie that misses to fulfill its potential.