Butler's Cinema Scene

Viola Davis

“WIDOWS” My rating: B

129 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Widows” is a sprawling crime drama that wants to be something more…and almost gets there.

The latest from Brit director Steve McQueen (“12 Years a Slave,” “Shame”) is a heist film with a twist: The perps are all women forced to engage in a crime in order to survive.

In the opening moments we see a group of career criminals — their leader, Harry Rawlings, is portrayed by Liam Neeson — saying goodbye to their families and going off to “work.”  That night all of them die in a fiery crash after stealing millions from a local Chicago crime lord.

They leave behind grieving women who aren’t sure how to get on with their lives.  Harry’s widow, Veronica (Viola Davis), still has the couple’s posh apartment and at least a small reservoir of cash. But her love for Harry was so intense and complete that she’s a mere shell of her former self.

Linda (Michelle Rodriguez) has supported her two kids with a dress shop — though her no-good hubby was always dipping into the till and, in fact, hasn’t paid the rent for months. Trophy wife Alice (Elizabeth Debicki) is pretty much cast adrift; her often-violent spouse (Jon Bernthal) has left behind nothing but bruises.

Worse is still to come.  Veronica is paid a visit by Jamal Manning (Brian Tyree Henry) whose millions, stolen by Harry’s crew, went up in flames. He now informs Veronica that she must make good on that debt…or else.  She has no choice but to recruit the other widows whose lives are also in danger; using as their guide a notebook in which Harry meticulously planned future crimes, the three women prepare and execute another multi-million-dollar heist.

This would be enough plot for most films. But the screenplay by McQueen and Gillian Flynn (“Gone Girl”) is only getting started. What they envision with “Widows” is a multi-character examination of modern American urban life…and it isn’t pretty.

This is a world in which everybody is a crook, including — no, especially — politicians.

Despite his criminal enterprises, Jamal Manning is running for city alderman (hey, it’s Chicago). His opponent is the Kennedy-esqe Jack Mulligan (Colin Farrell), whose closet-racist father (Robert Duvall) has up to now kept the seat in the family despite redistricting that has left the voter pool almost 100 percent black. No matter who wins, the residents are going to get screwed.

Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki

There is a remarkable scene early on in which we see Mulligan and his Girl Friday (Molly Kunz) leave a campaign rally in the crumbling inner city, get into a limo and drive back to Mulligan’s palatial home on the edges of the district.  This is accomplished in one long shot from a camera mounted on the hood of their car…we can hear the angry conversation inside but cannot see them talking; meanwhile in the background the scene quickly mutates from one of urban decay to suburban poshness. The haves and the have-nots, all in one uninterrupted take.

“Widows” doesn’t spend a lot of time showing the nuts and bolts of how Veronica and the other women plan out their big heist, so that when it finally gets underway much of it is a surprise.

But the extent to which the women must rely on their newfound wits and wiles to pull the job together does interest the filmmakers.  For example, the willowy but semi-vacuous Alice enters into a relationship with a wealthy architect (Lucas Haas), hoping to pump him for information about the building they must penetrate to get the cash. At first he seems like a nice guy who is actually falling for her (this makes her having to put out for him bearable), but ultimately he comes to represent the film’s general feelings about men:  they’re lying assholes (a grim reality that will hit home in the movie’s biggest plot twist).

Veronica finds herself blackmailing a philandering security expert in order to get the entry code to a vault with the loot; she puts on a tough face when confronting the guy but looks like she’s going to vomit when it’s all over.

McQueen has cast even minor parts with spectacularly good actors.  Daniel Kaluuya, fresh off his Oscar nomination as the good-guy hero of “Get Out,” is hair-raisingly scary as Jamal Manning’s murderous younger brother; Jacki Weaver has a great scene as Alice’s mother, who is perfectly willing to pimp out her daughter for the sake of cash flow; Garret Dillahunt is Harry Rawlings’ dim-witted driver, loyal to Veronica despite the fact that she can no longer pay him; Carrie Coon is yet another widow of Harry’s failed heist, but one with a head-spinning secret.

And finally there’s Cynthia Erivo as the self-assertive Belle, a late addition to the all-female gang who takes the gig less for the cash than for the opportunity to stick it to the powers that be.

In truth, there’s almost too much going on here for one film to handle. Thank, God, then for Davis, who gives the movie an emotional and intellectual center upon which the moviemakers can hang no end of ideas. Davis embodies grief and loss (nobody in film today can deliver a crying scene like she can) but also shows how Veronica mans up under pressure, pushing aside her vulnerabilities and insecurities to attack the job at hand.

Yet another Oscar nomination would seem to be in order.

|Robert W. Butler