Widows (15.)
Directed by Steve McQueen.
Starring Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Colin Farrell, Cynthia Erivo, Daniel Kaluuya, Brian Tyree Henry, Garret Dillahunt, Carrie Coon, Robert Duvall and Liam Neeson. 128 mins. Out on Blu-ray/ DVD on 18th March.
It was 2018's best thriller but audiences shunned it when it was released last November, and their reasons for doing so have been an issue of much debate. Is there no longer an audience for proper grown-up crime dramas? Did audiences fear that a film from the director of an Oscar winner, with females in the main roles, was going to be preachy? Or was it perhaps that, however entertaining, a film this open about how utterly corrupt American society has become was going to be all a bit too much for audiences in the states, even if there was a bit of bang-bang gunplay included.
Taken from Lynda La Plante's famous 80s ITV series, the plot has the widows of a gang of armed robbers, killed by the police in the middle of a getaway, being forced into doing one last job to get clear of their debts. The adaptation, by McQueen and Gone Girl writer Gillian Flynn, shortens but doesn't simplify the series, actually adding layers to it, including the introduction of the backdrop of a political campaign, the race to become Alderman for the 18th district of Chicago.
Chicago has always been a city with a reputation for corruption but what is striking in the film is how brazen the hypocrisy is, how thin the veneer of respectability. For example, a meeting between the two candidates, Mulligan (Farrell) and Jamal Manning (Henry), is initially presented as smug old-world political operator whose family has run the district for generations, going up against the voice of the downtrodden black people who mostly live there. But Manning is almost instantly revealed to be as bad as Mulligan, probably worse, a gangster trying to go legit and get an even bigger slice of the pie. Usually, a narrative would take time to reveal this, but in Widows characters turn at the click of a finger. The message is that the system is now so utter bent that people barely bother to hide it. Here nobody is good, nobody is untouched, they're all in the mire.
McQueen's journey from Turner Prize-winning visual artist to Oscar winner has to some extent made him a more conventional filmmaker. Compared to Hunger, or even 12 Years a Slave this is much less challenging or visually inventive piece of cinema. There is though one striking, and strikingly effective, shot of Farrell leaving a campaign rally on a piece of wasteland in the projects, getting into his car and being driven off, with the camera staying outside on the bonnet as we hear him argue with his campaign assistant. In one unbroken shot, the camera remains fixed upon the darkened windscreen, until two minutes later we stop outside Mulligan's campaign HQ in a much nicer part of town. And that single shot reveals a lot about his character and motivation, but also the integrated nature of big cities where wealth and poverty co-exist within blocks of each other.
Such economy of storytelling is vital because there is a lot to get through. At points, you may suspect that the film has been cut down from a longer piece. There are a few little loose ends here and there, and quite possibly the plot doesn't quite hold all the water it is asked to carry, but overall it's remarkably coherent.
Just look at that cast. There's so many of them. The challenge is giving everybody something to make it worth their while turning up, and it does. In the lead role, Viola Davis is a convincing powerhouse, much better here than in the sniffy/crying roles she usually gets nominated for. To be honest, if such things mattered, almost any one of the performers here would've been worth a nom but somehow the Academy managed to completely overlook it, even though here is a film that addresses all the worthy issues it needs to be seen to be concerned about, while being a fantastic entertainment.
Directed by Steve McQueen.
Starring Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Colin Farrell, Cynthia Erivo, Daniel Kaluuya, Brian Tyree Henry, Garret Dillahunt, Carrie Coon, Robert Duvall and Liam Neeson. 128 mins. Out on Blu-ray/ DVD on 18th March.
It was 2018's best thriller but audiences shunned it when it was released last November, and their reasons for doing so have been an issue of much debate. Is there no longer an audience for proper grown-up crime dramas? Did audiences fear that a film from the director of an Oscar winner, with females in the main roles, was going to be preachy? Or was it perhaps that, however entertaining, a film this open about how utterly corrupt American society has become was going to be all a bit too much for audiences in the states, even if there was a bit of bang-bang gunplay included.
Taken from Lynda La Plante's famous 80s ITV series, the plot has the widows of a gang of armed robbers, killed by the police in the middle of a getaway, being forced into doing one last job to get clear of their debts. The adaptation, by McQueen and Gone Girl writer Gillian Flynn, shortens but doesn't simplify the series, actually adding layers to it, including the introduction of the backdrop of a political campaign, the race to become Alderman for the 18th district of Chicago.
Chicago has always been a city with a reputation for corruption but what is striking in the film is how brazen the hypocrisy is, how thin the veneer of respectability. For example, a meeting between the two candidates, Mulligan (Farrell) and Jamal Manning (Henry), is initially presented as smug old-world political operator whose family has run the district for generations, going up against the voice of the downtrodden black people who mostly live there. But Manning is almost instantly revealed to be as bad as Mulligan, probably worse, a gangster trying to go legit and get an even bigger slice of the pie. Usually, a narrative would take time to reveal this, but in Widows characters turn at the click of a finger. The message is that the system is now so utter bent that people barely bother to hide it. Here nobody is good, nobody is untouched, they're all in the mire.
McQueen's journey from Turner Prize-winning visual artist to Oscar winner has to some extent made him a more conventional filmmaker. Compared to Hunger, or even 12 Years a Slave this is much less challenging or visually inventive piece of cinema. There is though one striking, and strikingly effective, shot of Farrell leaving a campaign rally on a piece of wasteland in the projects, getting into his car and being driven off, with the camera staying outside on the bonnet as we hear him argue with his campaign assistant. In one unbroken shot, the camera remains fixed upon the darkened windscreen, until two minutes later we stop outside Mulligan's campaign HQ in a much nicer part of town. And that single shot reveals a lot about his character and motivation, but also the integrated nature of big cities where wealth and poverty co-exist within blocks of each other.
Such economy of storytelling is vital because there is a lot to get through. At points, you may suspect that the film has been cut down from a longer piece. There are a few little loose ends here and there, and quite possibly the plot doesn't quite hold all the water it is asked to carry, but overall it's remarkably coherent.
Just look at that cast. There's so many of them. The challenge is giving everybody something to make it worth their while turning up, and it does. In the lead role, Viola Davis is a convincing powerhouse, much better here than in the sniffy/crying roles she usually gets nominated for. To be honest, if such things mattered, almost any one of the performers here would've been worth a nom but somehow the Academy managed to completely overlook it, even though here is a film that addresses all the worthy issues it needs to be seen to be concerned about, while being a fantastic entertainment.
