Director McQueen’s stellar “Widows” one of the best movies of the year
Director McQueen’s stellar ‘Widows’ one of the best movies of the year
Ayoung widow has just buried her husband, but her toughas-a-Chicago-brick, PolishAmerican mom is already telling her to get out there and find a man with deep pockets.
“You better face facts,” the mother says. “You don’t have the skills to make it on your own.”
The son of a powerful alderman privately tells his wife he might not have the stomach to run for his retiring father’s seat. His publicly compliant wife tears into him, telling him to man up.
A slick businessman is irritated when a paid escort suggests that the next time they meet up, they could just hang out and she could cook dinner. Doesn’t she get it? Yeah, he likes her, but as with everything else in his life, she’s just a commodity to him.
We meet these people in “Widows.” Any of them — the execrable moneymaker, the ambitious wife, the cruel mother of the widow — could be the centerpiece of an entire movie. And yet these richly drawn individuals are only bit players in Steve McQueen’s blistering, brilliant and hard-punching masterpiece.
This is that rare movie in which even the relatively peripheral characters are unforgettable.
The Chicago of “Widows” sometimes feels like a supercharged and stylized and exaggerated Chicago, and yet there’s the ring of truth to it all. On its surface, this is a noir-ish heist film, but it’s just as much a political thriller,