Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

Widows Blu-ray Movie Review

(S)heist?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 7, 2019

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.

Steve McQueen talks about wanting to more or less “yank” the audience into the film as it begins, and he does so by engaging in what might be termed “cheeky montage theory”, intercutting scenes of Veronica Rawlings (Viola Davis) and Harry Rawlings (Liam Neeson) engaging in a little loving with much more calamitous moments involving Harry and a bunch of other assumed thieves trying to get away after what seems like a botched robbery. Suffice it to say the police seem to be on to Harry and his crew, and things go from bad to worse, leaving the titular widowed women in the wake of the carnage. What's kind of interesting about Widows is how it really doesn't even try to contextualize Harry's life of crime, simply positing it as a given, with a certain amount of ambiguity about what and how much Veronica, a teacher's union representative, actually knows.

The film then introduces a veritable glut of other characters, including two other “new” widows as a result of the opening maelstrom, Linda Perelli (Michelle Rodriguez) and Alice Gunner (Elizabeth Debicki). Playing into the convoluted plot dynamics is an upcoming election for Chicago alderman, where longtime incumbent Tom Mulligan (Robert Duvall) is hoping to simply hand the reins to his son Jack (Colin Farrell), since this particular ward has been under Mulligan “management” evidently for generations. Making things difficult is a recent redistricting effort which may give upstart Jamal Manning (Brian Tyree Henry), who is not exactly a pillar of respectability himself, a chance at the seat. Jamal’s brother Jatemme (Daniel Kaluuya) is the henchman of the family, and there is at least one very disturbing scene documenting just how ruthless Jatemme can be.

In another plot point that arguably could have used a bit more development, Jamal shows up at Veronica’s house in the wake of Harry’s death to inform her that Harry made off with two million of Jamal’s dollars, and Jamal is expecting Veronica to make good on the debt. With an unexpected “gift” of a diary of sorts that Harry left behind, Veronica hatches a plot to steal five million dollars, something that will repay Jamal and leave enough left over for not only her, but for the other widows she hopes to recruit to the “project”, all of whom are shown to be in various desperate straits and certainly in need of some cold, hard cash.

While there’s the undercurrent of Veronica and her “gang” attempting to come to grips with their new “roles”, a lot of the film’s drama is actually extracurricular so to speak, concentrating on interrelationships that are admittedly part of the unfolding heist scenario, but not necessarily that germane to it. Therefore, there are all sorts of roiling dysfunctions detailed between, say, Alice and her mother (a creepy Jacki Weaver) and Linda and her mother-in-law, as well as generational conflict between Tom and Jack. There are also vignettes given over to another widow named Amanda (Carrie Coon) whom Veronica decides not to get involved when she sees Amanda has a newborn (a child who later plays into the plot in a perhaps needlessly melodramatic way), as well as to Veronica’s driver Bash (Garrett Dillahunt), who (sorry to pun here) gets bashed himself, leading to Veronica recruiting Belle (Cynthia Erivo), who has a prior relationship with Linda. Alice also kinda sorta takes her harridan mother’s advice and starts trading sex for money (or at least information), leading to the introduction of yet another character, David (Lukas Haas).

I’ve frankly only barely touched on a number of elements that are woven through Widows’ surprisingly dense narrative. The film offers a glut of really brilliant performances, and I think it might have been a total knockout had it not ultimately given in to some genre clichés, especially in the third act which is rife with both hyperbolic plot developments and one late “twist” which I’m assuming most every thriller junkie will have seen coming from a mile off. Still, the film kind of elides even that clunkiness to deliver some real emotion along the way. This is the rare “popcorn movie” that actually seems to have a heart, mind and soul, and it’s really a fascinating achievement despite some occasional stumbles.

Widows Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

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.

Widows Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

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.

Widows Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Widows Unmasked: A Chicago Story (1080p; 52:10) is an interesting multi-part featurette that gets into the background of the piece, including its British television progenitor. There are several excellent interviews and good behind the scenes footage of things like how they filmed the opening chase sequence.


• Gallery (1080p; 1:58) offers either a Manual Advance or an Auto Advance option. The timing is for the Auto Advance option.


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:01)

Widows Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

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.