Philadelphia Film Festival 2018: Steve McQueen's 'Widows'

Widows played as a Centerpiece film Saturday night as part of the 27th Philadelphia Film Festival. Based on an early-'80s British miniseries, it was adapted by McQueen and novelist Gillian Flynn (author of Sharp Objects, adapted for the small screen this year by HBO). McQueen's Twelve Years a Slave also showed at the Philadelphia Film Festival back in 2013.

High-concept heist

A group of male criminals (led by Liam Neeson) gets wiped out while committing a high-stakes robbery. Afterward, the dead men’s widows (Viola Davis, Elizabeth Debicki, and Michelle Rodriguez, assisted by nonwidow Cynthia Erivo) team up to carry out a heist of their own. Along the way, there are innumerable twists and minor details of the different plots converge.

But there's more going on here, as the film sets those plots against issues of race, violence, gentrification, and political corruption in contemporary Chicago. It’s all framed by a special election for an alderman seat between a white political scion (Colin Farrell) and an African-American crime boss (Atlanta’s Brian Tyree Henry) seeking to reinvent himself as a politician.

With the intersection of criminals and politicians, The Wire seems a clear influence here, along with Sidney Lumet's 1970s New York crime films. However, this film is Chicago to its core. Leave it to a British director to get a great American city so right.

While there's only a small amount of traditional action, the pacing is perfect. McQueen begins the film with a montage that's rare for this sort of movie.

"Talent-rich"

This is a deep, talent-rich cast that delivers superlative performances that are both expected and surprising. Viola Davis is at her best, equal parts emotional and fearsome. Debicki gives a revelatory performance as a very specific type of Chicago Polish-American (she previously excelled this year in the way-too-little-seen The Tale).

Farrell adds Chicago to the long list of accents he's pulled off in his career, while Henry again shows what a major talent he is. Henry also appears in a brief but outstanding role in another Philadelphia Film Festival Centerpiece, If Beale Street Could Talk. And Erivo, a stage veteran, shines in a very different part from her breakout turn earlier this month in Bad Times at the El Royale.

The cast also makes room for Get Out star Daniel Kaluuya as the crime lord's truly fearsome enforcer, with Robert Duvall as Farrell's elderly racist politician father.

My only complaint is that a certain revelation about the child of one of the couples, while handled tastefully, renders some of the film’s other stakes less significant. But beyond that, Widows marks a successful return by a great director.