Checked out the new heist film Widows, which looks like a more serious-minded version of Ocean’s 8, based on the trailers. In reality, they are both crime capers but Widows has different things on its mind and is less a fun heist flick than the Sandra Bullock movie form earlier this year.
Widows is about a gang of thieves, lead by Liam Neeson, who rob two million dollars from a local criminal who is running for local office. They are killed in a hail of gunfire and explosions, leaving their windows behind. The criminal kingpin/politician visits Neeson’s widow – played by Viola Davis, and makes it clear she has to pay him back. Since the money burned up in the fire, she finds her husband’s notes for a heist and gets the widows of the other two men together to plan a robbery.
That’s the basic premise that’s more-or-less in the trailer but the film is also just as much about local Chicago politics. The criminal kingkpin vs. the old political legacy of Colin Farrell, Irish and white, running for alderman of a predominantly black distract. Daniel Kaluuya does a great job of playing an unhinged enforcer for one team while Robert Duvall plays Ferrel’s ex-alderman racist dad. All of these characters rotate in and around the heist, always unaware of what’s going on just under their noses. Because, as Viola Davis says in the trailer, “Nobdoy thinks they (the Widows) have the balls to pull this off.”
This is a very dour, somber film and you gotta wonder if a heist flick should have this tone. But it does and it’s a slow burn of a movie. I was never bored but I can imagine people who want something lighter and frothier might be bored. I’d recommend the flick regardless.
Score: 86