Widows

Oscar-winning director Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave) and novelist Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl) have crafted a compelling crime caper that has more twists and turns than a corkscrew. Living in a luxurious penthouse on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive, elegant, educated Veronica Rawlings (Viola Davis) has never paid much attention to her felonious husband Harry’s (Liam Neeson) shady business. But when one of his robberies goes awry, she’s left a widow, along with the wives of his crew. In her grief, Veronica’s accosted by an ambitious politician (Brian Tyree Henry)—and his psychotic/enforcer brother (Daniel Kaluuya)—who is in a heated campaign for local alderman against corrupt Jack Mulligan (Colin Farrell), who hopes to inherit the seat recently vacated by his ailing father (Robert Duvall). Left with little choice but to settle her late husband’s debt, Veronica assembles the other despairing, penniless wives (Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki) in a posh sauna, where they begin to plot a $5 million theft, following an intricate strategy that Harry left in a meticulously detailed notebook. Based on a British TV series, the gritty script tackles issues of poverty, race, gender, class, politics, religion, and police brutality, as the savvy women use other people’s clichéd expectations to their own advantage. An empowering tale of women who steal the show, this is recommended. (S. Granger)