A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Wednesday, March 4, 2020

Widows (Steve McQueen, 2018)

Elizabeth Debicki, Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, and Cynthia Erivo in Widows
Cast: Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Cynthia Erivo, Colin Farrell, Brian Tyree Henry, Daniel Kaluuya, Garret Dillahunt, Liam Neeson, Robert Duvall, Carrie Coon, Jacki Weaver, Lukas Haas, Jon Bernthal, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Kevin J. O'Connor. Screenplay: Gillian Flynn, Steve McQueen, based on a TV series by Lynda LaPlante. Cinematography: Sean Bobbitt. Production design: Adam Stockhausen. Film editing: Joe Walker. Music: Hans Zimmer.

A solid dark thriller with a powerhouse cast, Widows tells the story of four women married to professional thieves who are bereaved when a major heist goes wrong and the van the men are in goes up in a fiery explosion. The problem is that the loot was also incinerated and it belonged to a powerful Chicago politician and crime boss, Jamal Manning (Brian Tyree Henry), who shows up at the home of one of the women, Veronica (Viola Davis), demanding repayment. Veronica, who had no part in her husband's crimes, is desperate to raise the money, but her husband's chauffeur had the key to his safety deposit box, in which she discovers a notebook full of detailed plans for all of his heists, including one he had yet to pull off. Eventually, she concludes that the only way to raise the necessary millions is to do that heist herself, for which she enlists two of her fellow widows. The film casts fine actors like Liam Neeson, Daniel Kaluuya, Robert Duvall, Carrie Coon, Lukas Haas, and Jon Bernthal in secondary roles as the complications and surprise twists ensue. Steve McQueen's no-nonsense direction and the skill of his cast make the whole thing mostly plausible, mainly by not giving you time to question some of the plot's weaknesses. There's a subplot about the election battle between Jamal Manning and Jack Mulligan (Colin Farrell), the scion of an old Irish political family, which is tied to the main plot by some fairly tenuous threads, a few of which are blatant contrivances. But the focus is on Veronica and her crew, played superbly by Davis, Elizabeth Debicki, Michelle Rodriguez, and Cynthia Erivo.

No comments: