Widows

With a luminescent cast, and slick filmmaking style to spare, Steve McQueen's heist thriller Widows should be putting the gin into the vermouth, but following a sloppily plotted script co-written by McQueen and pop-snake-oil saleswoman Gillian Flynn, a film that should have been startling and vibrant settles for basically decent -- even if extraordinarily well made and performed.

As in keeping with McQueen's immaculate style, it is pleasingly luxuriant to watch. Going to see this film at the Toronto International Film Festival the day after seeing Shane Black's stultifying Predators was like putting down a copy of In Touch in favor of Vanity Fair, such is the contrast between, well, the contrasts, deep-set colors, and configurations of McQueen's longtime cinematographer Sean Bobbitt, and the desultory camera work often seen in bland Hollywood hokum.

McQueen, whose last film, 12 Years a Slave, won the best picture Oscar, fills the frame with gravitas, adding emotional and compositional depth. It's an acutely resonant style, mature, meticulous, and jealously guarded, which is why, given the more standardized thriller twists that Flynn considers her specialty, it feels discordant with this pulpy material. None of this friction takes anything away from the performances, which are superb across the board, especially from Viola Davis, the film's trip-beating heart.

The setup begins with a heist caper gone seriously wrong. A group of men -- most of whom are married, or the equivalent -- attempt to make off with a duffle bag full of stolen campaign funds, but are bushwhacked by a squadron of cops, tipped off to their plan, as the ensuing gun battle and explosions wipe the criminals out. This leaves their grieving partners -- including Veronica (Davis), whose husband, Harry (Liam Neeson), was the crew's ringleader and mastermind; Linda (Michelle Rodriguez), a tough-as-nails businesswoman with a pair of young children to worry about; and Alice (Elizabeth Debicki), a super-model-type gangster moll, who has allowed her stunning looks to take care of everything in her life up to this point.

With mounting pressure from bill collectors, both regular and of the criminal variety -- the money the crew tried to steal was from the political war chest of a particularly menacing pair of brothers (Brian Tyree Henry and Daniel Kaluuya), one of whom is running for office -- Veronica figures the only way to get back anything of what she lost is to deploy another one of her husband's well-researched schemes, hitting a hidden vault in the house of another area high-roller. For this, she needs accomplices, and is able to recruit Linda, Alice, and Belle (Cynthia Erivo), one of Linda's baby sitters into the plan.

Rather than (another) female twist on the Ocean's series, however, McQueen's film goes a bit deeper into the dynamics of the women themselves, as they mourn, and rage, and cavil with one another, as the plan, powered relentlessly by the ever-pragmatic Veronica, grinds down their already faint connection. Before their partners were killed, they barely knew one another, for the most part, and being thrown together in such a time of panic and grief doesn't always make for the most lasting of mortar.

One thing to appreciate about the otherwise troublesome script is its attention to character interplay: McQueen doesn't let a scene play out without loading it with psychological nuance, and in some cases, extreme discomfort. An early scene, when Jamal Manning, the brother running for election, comes to Veronica's apartment in order to threaten her into getting his money back to him, hums with menace -- especially when Manning takes Veronica's adorable dog (possibly a West Highland Terrier, but don't quote me) from her arms and holds him, squirming uncomfortably, against his chest (and here, I will note to animal lovers, no harm comes to the dog in the film, in fact, there's a wonderful moment just before the climax begins, where he is pointedly taken to safety). You do get the impression the cast enjoyed the hell out of playing their roles. Henry isn't the only one who gets to proffer his considerable coercion: Kaluuya, who was the affable lead in Get Out, here gets to play the heavy, his brother's muscle, and does so with considerable, intimidating relish.

Everything is in place for a cracking good heist movie, so where does the film go wrong? I have my suspicions: as already noted, McQueen co-wrote the script with the illustrious Flynn, whose pretentiously pulpy sensibilities are all over the thing, from the somewhat ridiculous plotting to the hoary -- and thoroughly nonsensical -- plot twist at the end that the film very much doesn't need.

In this way, McQueen's film feels hijacked by Flynn's ablutions, sapping it of sustaining power. There's still plenty to like here: The keen performances work seamlessly with the director's audacious filmmaking (the opening salvo, in which a quiet domestic scene is intercut with the bombastic chaos of the botched heist job takes what is a standard sort of concept and turns all the dials to 11), which, as always, is a marvel. It's simply too bad that its commercial instincts are so rooted in Flynn-ology.

MovieStyle on 11/16/2018