Widows 2018 * * Stars

Director: Steve McQueen
Year: 2018
Rated R
Rating: * * Stars
Cast: Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriquez, Daniel Kaluuya

These ain't Four Brothers, they're four sisters. They're four women who have to take care of their husband's debt after said husbands die in a botched robbery. They plan a lucrative score to appease a nasty crime boss who wants $2 million dollars from them. That's the rub of 2018's Widows, my latest review. It's part soap opera, part heist piece, and all mob filler.

Question: What flick has well known troupers like Jacki Weaver (she's in one and a half scenes), Jon Bernthal (he's in half a scene), Liam Neeson, and Robert Duvall barely registering as full blown personas? Answer: Widows does and despite its readable twist early on, the pic feels solely edited on the chopping block.

Anyway, Widows is like an Ocean's Eleven movie minus the fun but with more of the brutality. And if you live in the city of Chicago like I do (Widow's main locale), Widow's cankerous violence (remember Death Wish?) and remorseless nature will surely leave you with a bad taste in your mouth. One scene in particular reminded me of 2014's police shooting of Chicagoan Laquan McDonald. Man I tell you that can't be good.

Registering at 129 minutes with too many miscast actors and enough subplots to power a small country, Widows is polarizing and ideological to the nth degree. Its only sequence of real excitement involves ladies in hockey masks with desperation on their minds and cocked firearms in tote. Almost everything else in Widows has to do with false hope and mean-spirited malaise.

Steve McQueen helms Widows after a five-year hiatus from 12 Years a Slave. His unsympathetic direction is off-kilter as he gives us weird GoPro shots and lets the camera pan away when people are having middling confrontations (who does he think he is, Taxi Driver Scorsese?). All in all, Widows may rattle the squeamish and make you feel unsafe in a heated theater. Still, it's a miscalculation for almost everyone else involved. My rating: 2 stars.

Written by Jesse Burleson