7.3 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Set in contemporary Chicago, amidst a time of turmoil, four women with nothing in common except a debt left behind by their dead husbands' criminal activities take fate into their own hands and conspire to forge a future on their own terms.
Starring: Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Cynthia Erivo, Colin FarrellThriller | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Crime | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 kbps)
French: Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 kbps)
English SDH, French, Spanish
Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
Digital copy
DVD copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region free
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Though they have very little else in common, it’s interesting to compare two recent 20th Century Fox releases, The Old Man & the Gun and Widows, for how they attempt to “reinvent” the heist or caper genre. The Old Man & the Gun foregoes any elaborate planning for and even execution of various robberies, simply positing its affable “bad guy” as someone who “politely” relieves various banking institutions of their vaulted funds. Widows on the other hand does get into some of the “nuts and bolts” of planning an elaborate heist, but it’s the fact that it’s a bunch of women doing the planning (and, ultimately, thieving) that probably gives this film its most distinctive element. But Widows has quite a bit more on its mind that a “mere” heist or caper aspect. This is a film virtually teeming with all sorts of interrelated subplots, subplots which deal with things like female empowerment (perhaps understandably, given the underlying conceit of the film), but which also include the roiling world of Chicago politics, dysfunctional relationships between both spouses and parents and children, racial inequities and religious fervor. There's even a passing if ultimately devastating sidebar involving what has become almost a staple in relatively recent films like The Hate U Give and Blindspotting, the shooting of an unarmed black kid by a white policeman. That’s a lot to stuff into a film which is ostensibly concerned with removing a cache of cash from a challenging location, but co-screenwriters Steve McQueen (who also directed) and Gone Girl and Sharp Objects scribe Gillian Flynn manage to wend their way through the labyrinth with surprising ease, delivering a film which manages to provide the requisite adrenaline rushes while also offering perhaps surprisingly nuanced accounts of several characters.
Widows is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. Shot on film and finished at a 4K DI (according to the IMDb), this is a really deeply textured and impressively organic looking transfer, though there are just a couple of slight anomalies along the way. The film offers a deeply burnished palette, with elements like Veronica's bright red clothing (and lipstick!) or the kind of cool blue grading given to some of the Rawlings bedroom (and bathroom) material looking nicely nuanced, if not always "natural", strictly speaking. McQueen and cinematographer Sean Bobbitt opt for a lot of close-ups, sometimes so close that only part of a face fills the frame, and as such, fine detail on elements like flyaway hair or skin crags are often very impressive. A lot of the film, especially the third act, takes place either at night or in extremely dim locations, and while shadow detail isn't overpowering, it's surprisingly evident a lot of the time. One of the stylistic gambits McQueen and Bobbitt employ is a lot of shooting through glass or next to mirrors, and I'm not sure if that plays into a couple of weird moments that I've tried to document in screenshots 18 and 19, as well as screenshot 4 in the 4K UHD review which will be going live soon). Blurriness through glass is understandable, as is even some slight refractive qualities, but look at the side of Davis' face in screenshot 19. I frankly can't account for that weird "fringing", unless the shot is of a mirror and there's some refracting going on (the framing makes it impossible to really tell, at least it did to me). What I found odd about this is Davis moves quite a bit in this moment, and that weird line follows the side of her face no matter where she goes, which may indicate something like a malfunctioning lens. In any case, these are slight, niggling concerns in an otherwise very enjoyable transfer.
Once again I'm cheating just a bit, by giving this 1080p Blu-ray's DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 mix a 4.5, since I'm about to review the 4K UHD version of the film's Dolby Atmos track, and there is a definite uptick in activity, especially overhead, in that version, though I can't imagine any audiophile is going to have much of anything to complain about with regard to this version's sonics. From the opening moments, which intercut softer, gentler sounds like breathing and kissing with bombastic explosions, gunfire, racing engines and squealing tires, the surround track on this release is consistently impressive and often incredibly forceful. The film doesn't really match the opening sequence in terms of outright bombast for the bulk of the rest of its running time, but immersion is very smartly handled throughout, with good placement of ambient environmental sounds and individual effects like gunshots being fired always resonating with sufficient impact. Dialogue and score are also rendered flawlessly, with excellent fidelity and very wide dynamic range throughout the presentation.
My wife was a news reporter for a couple of big stations in Chicago for several years, and one of her "beats" was City Hall, a place rife with subterfuge and even Machiavellian machinations. Her news director told her she had to get a lot tougher to deal with the people there, never accepting anything at face value and not being afraid to confront folks who were sometimes (often?) scheming and venal. All of those elements are certainly more than evident in Widows, though the rough and tumble world of Chicago politics is just one of several rather interesting elements to this supposed "heist" or "caper" film. It's probably the focus on women doing the plotting and thieving that sets this entry apart from some of its genre siblings. Technical merits are first rate despite a couple of odd moments in the video presentation, and Widows comes Recommended.
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