"Widows" and the Decay of Love | Movie Review
The creative marriage of director Steve McQueen and writer Gillian Flynn has resulted in Widows - a case study in how stories can inevitably fumble with unnecessary complexity. Despite a rugged pace and a somewhat bloated screenplay, Widows is an exciting and smart heist film that’s well worth seeing.
Few films have enamored me in the same capacity of 2014’s Gone Girl. To this day, seeing that film in a theater while knowing next to nothing about the plot still remains as one of the greatest cinematic experiences I’ve ever had. That film boasted a dark, intellectual, and thought-provoking storyline littered with multidimensional, mostly unlikable characters that made the film’s darker, more nuanced plot threads become all the more powerful.
As such, any work that boasts Gillian Flynn’s name as a credit grabs my attention as I hope to become enchanted by a film’s writing style the same way that Gone Girl accomplished. As such, Widows, the recently released collaboration between Gillian Flynn and director and co-screenwriter Steve McQueen (of 12 Years A Slave fame), caught my eye immediately. While I’m admittedly unfamiliar with McQueen’s outside of his various accolades from his work on 12 Years, I was optimistic and curious to see what experience Flynn and McQueen could craft together. The result was a film that, while certainly impressive in its own right, left a somewhat disappointing aftertaste.
Widows is an examination of a collection of wives, whose lifestyles have been impacted by the deaths of their husbands, all of which were banded together as thieves. Following their deaths after a heist mission gone wrong, the deceased husbands leave behind catastrophic debts and burdens onto their wives.
Linda, an entrepreneur, loses her store, and with it her ability to support her children. Alice, a recipient of an abusive relationship, now struggles to find meaning and direction in her life, resorting to dating and sleeping with rich men to make ends meet. Veronica, our protagonist, is threatened by Jamal Manning, a local politician and crime lord whom had $2 million stolen from the deceased thieves and is now willing to kill each of the widows if he doesn’t receive compensation for his stolen campaign money. Upon finding a notebook detailing her husband’s planned heists, Veronica takes it upon herself to recruit the other widowed women to steal $5 million from Jack Mulligan, Manning’s political opponent, to clear her and the other widows’ names from Manning’s wrath.
As you can likely gather from the lengthy synopsis alone, there’s a lot going on here. What’s more is that Widows offers an extensive look at various characters, though perhaps a look that’s too extensive. Indeed, Widows unfortunately suffers from becoming bloated through focusing on too many characters, rather than diving into a select few. The first act, in particular, is the best illustration of this. While the film certainly has a lot of characters, motivations, and conflicts to unpack and set up, all of these are delivered quite sluggishly and even awkwardly. While we may gain momentum in uncovering Character A’s motivation, we’ll suddenly shift to Characters B and C, resulting in a loss of plot momentum and energy.
While the first act struggles with focusing too wide of a variety of characters, it’s an issue that ultimately relinquishes itself as the film progresses. It takes until the second half of the film, but once the pieces start to align and we finally have full access to seeing how and why our protagonists go through with the heist (all while being quite under-prepared for it) - that’s when this film approaches the exciting heights of Gone Girl. When we see the preparation and planning for the main heist of the film and we see many character relationships blossom - that’s when this film finally manages to find its footing and excels.
With that in mind, is this film’s masterful second half worth sitting through a begrudgingly slow-paced first half? To answer that question, I want to discuss the biggest flaws I have with the first half, followed by what I feel are the strongest and smartest aspects of the second half.
Earlier, I mentioned that the first half of the film quickly goes through many different characters in the film. Perhaps one of the biggest detriments of the film’s first half is its focus on quantity over quality regarding characters. We’re given a scene or two for each character that excellently describes who they are and what kinds of behaviors we can expect from them as the film progresses, but with this also comes characters that feel a bit two-dimensional. No character necessarily feels particularly noteworthy as we’re introduced to so many characters so quickly. This isn’t aided by the fact that there unfortunately aren’t many performances that stand out as memorable (the most notable exception to this is Daniel Kaluuya’s excellently foreboding performance as Jatemme Manning).
With that said, this approach to revealing characters actually works to the film’s benefit in some instances. In particular, the scenes in which we’re introduced to each of the titular widows shows each woman with their husband, all of which instantly show us far-from-perfect, abusive relationships that each of our protagonists had with their late husbands. These scenes, often not having an abundance of dialogue, effectively convey what each relationship was like, in addition to making the audience develop a level of sympathy with each of the leading women.
While introducing and focusing on so many characters manages to be too ambitious of an undertaking, the greatest flaw of the film’s first half is a generally sluggish pace. Slow pacing when starting is an unfortunately common trap that many films in this genre fall into, and it’s forgivable to some extent. For any plots involving a heist, we need to have contexts for why characters want to go through with the heist, what stakes are involved, and what obstacles will have to be overcome - setting up all of these take time to accomplish.
Where Widows stumbles with this is that, like with its treatment of characters, the film has too vast of a selection of plot threads, which causes a few beats in the plot to feel unnecessary to the totality of Widows’ narrative. Specifically, there’s a subplot involving Jack Mulligan and his relationship with his father that doesn’t really progress the plot nor our understanding of Jack Mulligan’s character in a truly significant way.
In fact, aspects of the plot involving the political competition between Jack Mulligan and Jamal Manning ultimately feels inconsequential. While we do eventually see a heist that involves money flowing between Mulligan and Manning, the actual election that pits Mulligan and Manning against each other doesn’t feel all too important. Despite that, we have a lot of time devoted to each politician, which in turn takes focus away from other characters and plot threads that could give the movie better energy and momentum.
So while the first half of Widows is bogged down by poor pacing and a lack of focus on particular characters and plot threads, it thankfully excels where heist movies should - in the heist itself. While it takes some time to get there, seeing Veronica, Linda, and Alice prepare for stealing Mulligan’s campaign money is exciting, profound, and gives the film a great sense of momentum. Every scene gives us either a development that gets Veronica and company closer to succeeding or gives us an obstacle that makes their chances of success seem increasingly slim - all of which significantly strengthen the pacing and flow of the film. Additionally, the third act is filled with intense action sequences and plot twists (some of which are predictable, others not so much).
Though, Widows’s most admirable trait in its second half involves the reason I came to see the film in the first place: its writing. I wanted to see Gillian Flynn’s definitive style of having characters being dowsed moral darkness and complexity. While the first half of the film is lacking in this regard, it’s really the second half of Widows in which we see characters - even ones that we think we should be rooting for - have dark, unlikable sides to them. Having characters that we focus on have be somehow likable and unlikable at the same time is what made me fall in love with Gone Girl, and thankfully, Widows accomplishes this as well, just not to the same extent. There’s one scene in particular that deserves special attention: a scene in which we see a long shot of Jack Mulligan talking to his secretary in a car, describing his political objectives and campaigning as nothing more than a “business” to him.
This leads to what I feel is the strongest aspects of Widows: its commentary on the decay of love. Using the previously mentioned scene as an example, Jack Mulligan is a politician promoting the emergence of minority-owned small businesses. He promotes them, stating that the money that these businesses make go back into the community, and that he wants to strengthen the community that he politically represents. However, this car scene reveals that he truly doesn’t care about this, that it’s all an act. He’s just saying these things as a business PR move, and not out of genuineness. A local politician - a position that we would assume would be held by someone who has a love and passion for what they represent - is, in actuality, a morally corrupt soul has exchanged his ability to love and have empathy for others for money and political power.
Perhaps the most blatant of the theme of the decay of love is showcased in a scene with a reverend, stating that “ignorance has become the new excellence”, with the attending crowd cheering in agreement. He states that ignorance is becoming increasingly tolerated by society, and that ignorance is what eventually leads to hatred and violence. The only way to combat this, he describes, is to put love back into the equation. To create a world of peace and understanding, one must be willing to love and have compassion for others. And yet, it is just this concept that our protagonists and antagonists struggle to grasp, resulting in the bloodshed and emotional turmoil that our characters experience throughout the film.
When he was alive, Alice’s husband physically abused her, and Alice was convinced that she needed to be in this relationship. This toxic relationship was one without love. Instead, it was filled with emotional ignorance and pain. Linda’s husband gambling away the money from his heists instead of using his acquired money to support his business-owning wife and family. When we’re introduced to Linda and her husband, it’s clear to see that Linda despises her husband’s tendency to spend money that should be going towards her company and family. Her relationship has become one without love - it is only filled with loathing. Even Veronica, who we’re initially led to believe had a happy marriage, ultimately had a severe conflict involving her marriage and family that led to her relationship and life becoming one without love.
All of our characters are brought together due to circumstances that have eviscerated their lives of love and compassion for others. This lack of love and empathy in their marriages forces their lives to be put at stake. The decay of love in their loves and the perception of ignorance becoming excellence has forced them to be in the midst of a violent struggle that could very well result in their deaths.
This commentary on the decay of love is one that I found absolutely fascinating. There’s certainly a lot to dissect with this plot thread, meaning that this mini-analysis of this plot thread isn’t exhaustive by any means. If anything, this plot thread has encouraged me to look into eventually purchase the film and view it multiple times to get more out of this plot thread. This is a mark of well-done, insightful writing. It certainly empowers the film and elevates it into being a heist film that stands above many others. With that said, Widows still suffers in some areas and falls into some genre trappings that prevent it from coming close to the brilliance of Gone Girl.
Widows - while certainly having some excellently realized commentary on modern western culture and the increasing spread of apathy - doesn’t manage to do much you haven’t seen before in a heist film. It unfortunately conforms a fair number of tropes that are common in the genre, in addition to having a first half that has poor pacing and having so many characters that key characters don’t get as much time as they deserve. But Widows manages to pick itself up in its second half, with an excellent third act particularly standing out. It’s certainly flawed, but it’s clear that this film was a product of smart and lovingly-crafted writing and direction, which alone makes it worth a watch.
Final Grade: B
Thanks for reading! What did you think of Widows? As always, feel free to join the conversation and let me know what you think!
