Widows review

[Westside Steve]

Widows
20th Century Fox
R.                      130 min

Okay gang it’s cold outside and the Oscars are right around the corner. I recently read some random articles with predictions for 9 nominations for Best Picture. That speculative list will certainly take more shape after the Golden Globes but I need to start catching up on some non box office hits. Among this list are a few I’d not heard of and one that I had but didn’t take seriously, a female driven heist flick called WIDOWS.  Starring Viola Davis and directed by Steve McQueen (the black guy, not  the movie star) it’s the story of political skullduggery and a multimillion-dollar crime gone bad. The widows here are the survivors of the ill-fated criminals and find themselves left on their own, at odds with the real bad guys who commissioned the robbery in the first place. Those particular bad guys are politicians, Brian Tyree, Colin Farrell and Robert Duvall and they all want the millions of dollars that supposedly burned up when the crooks were not only shot but incinerated. They figure Veronica (Davis) has to know where the loot is stashed since her husband (Liam Neeson) was the ringleader. They give her two weeks to find and return the money or else. It’s probably just a little too coincidental to be believed but her ex-husband just so happens to have left detailed plans for a new even bigger crime in his safe deposit box. So guess who is going to pull that one off? Actually if you think that’s a lazy plot device ask yourself why the evil politicians would give her two weeks to find the money assuming she already knows where it would have been? For one thing it allows the movie to go on for over 2 hours reminding us why we don’t like crooked politicians as innocent people get tortured and killed along the way. 20 minutes before the end there’s a huge shift and a completely unexpected turn of events that changes the direction of the film completely. I’m not going to spill the beans but in a good mystery one can look back over the series of events and realize that they might have seen it coming. Not here though, it’s basically out of left field.
WIDOWS will probably get more attention because, like a big budget Lifetime Network production, it’s women against men. I do give them credit, however, for resisting the urge to lead with the race card. It really is basically just a crime movie with a little revenge added in. 
The biggest problem here, besides the predictable plot, is the pacing. At somewhat over 2 hours this one seems even longer. And even with a pretty good cast there are no exemplary performances to hold the attention and the action segments are not only mediocre but few and far between. As for the ending, it didn’t feel natural to me but I guess it might to someone.
C+
WSS