McQueen’s heist movie on circuit

British director Steve McQueen, pictured, returned to the limelight at the Toronto film festival on Sunday with the feminist heist movie Widows, at a time when calls are multiplying for heftier roles for women.

It’s been five years since he released his last movie 12 Years A Slave, which won an Academy Award for best picture.

His newest film, starring Viola Davis – the first black woman to be nominated for three Academy Awards, winning one for Fences last year – was adapted from Lynda La Plante’s 1983-85 British television series, which McQueen says “just spoke to me as a 13-year-old black boy in London”.

“On screen, these four women were being judged by their appearance rather than their character,” McQueen told a press conference in Toronto for the film’s world premiere.

“And at that point I was too.”

In the film, Davis plays Veronica who lives a cushy life in Chicago bought by her partner, Rawlins (Liam Neeson), robbing people.

When a job goes wrong leaving Rawlins’s gang dead, a local crime boss (Brian Tyree Henry) and his muscle (Daniel Kaluuya) come looking for the money, forcing Veronica to enlist the other women who lost their partners (Michelle Rodriguez, Cynthia Erivo and Elizabeth Debicki) for a heist.

“The best thing we have going for us is being who we are, because no one thinks we have the balls to pull this off,” Veronica says in the film.

Rodriguez’s character Linda adds: “If this whole thing goes wrong, I want my kids to know that I didn’t just sit there and take it, I did something.”

The film also stars Jacki Weaver, Colin Farrell and Robert Duvall. – AFP