When you think of the wives and girlfriends of criminals and mobsters in cinema and television, what or who comes to mind? Kay Adams? Elvira Hancock? Skyler White?
They are either victims of a man’s misdeeds or end up becoming part of the problem. They might get fancy jewelry or a big house, but they are the ones who get shut out of the room. They get greedy. They get addicted. They get killed. And, as an unwritten rule, they are secondary.
It’s part of the reason why Steve McQueen’s “Widows ” is such a welcome cocktail: The wives are the ones in the spotlight. Their husbands, the criminals fetishized by so, so many movies, are the ones who die at the beginning.
In his first film since the Oscar-winning “12 Years a Slave,” McQueen has gone in a very different direction with this Lynda La Plante adaptation. “Widows” is a B-movie thriller with an all-star ensemble and a dusting of art-house cred. McQueen co-wrote it with “Gone Girl” author Gillian Flynn and it is dark, relentlessly intense and crafted for mass audience appeal.
And who better to stare down the camera, and every seedy character the city of Chicago has to offer, from corrupt legacy politicians (Colin Farrell and Robert Duvall) to truly terrifying gang muscle (“Get Out’s” Daniel Kaluuya), than the incomparable Viola Davis?