*Warning: Spoilers Ahead*
When their husbands die, owing $2 million to a crime boss in their hometown in Chicago, three widows decide to plan a heist to pay him back and maintain their way of life.
Going into the film I had high hopes, as it toted big name actors Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Cynthia Erivo, Colin Farrell, Brian Tyree Henry, Daniel Kaluuya, Jacki Weaver, Carrie Coon, Robert Duvall, and Liam Neeson, in addition to the incredible Steve McQueen as Director and Co-Writer. Apparently lots of people shared my hopes, since the film has already made over $40 million internationally since it hit theaters this November.
The film gets off to a strong start, with sleek cuts between a fight sequence and domestic life. After this the film starts to slow down as we watch both as the three widows plan their $5 million heist and as Jamal Manning and Jack Mulligan do the behind the scenes work for their competing campaigns for the 18th Ward in Chicago. In a twist that both felt cliché and out of left field, it turns out that Veronica’s husband, the head honcho for the heist gone wrong, actually planned the whole thing and faked his own death to leave her for a white woman. Once Veronica really kills her husband and frames him for her heist, all is right in the widows world.
Overall the film was melodramatic, well-acted, beautifully shot, and eventually unsatisfying.