"Widows"

We had missed this highly acclaimed and highly recommended movie when it was out in the theaters late last year, so we finally caught up with it last night via Amazon Prime.  Glad we finally got to it.

Three women - Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, and Elizabeth Debicki - get caught in the crossfire of Chicago racial tensions and crooked ward politics when a heist-gone-wrong ends up in the death of their husbands and leaves them as, well, widows.  To save themselves, they have to pull off a heist themselves.  I'll spare you the details; just watch the movie.  A terrific cast also features Liam Neeson, Robert Duvall, Colin Farrell, and Daniel Kaluuya.  Consummate old pro Duvall pretty much dominates every scene that he is in.

Like a lot of heist flicks, it gets kind of murky at the end, you know, like what happened to all those bags of money, so you just have to take some of it on faith.  It is directed by Steve McQueen, who directed the Oscar winning "Twelve Years A Slave" of a few years back, and there are some terrific action scenes in it.  One of my favorite scenes, though, was a subdued one between alderman candidate Farrell and his assistant while they are driving down a street in a car, and all that you see is the outside of he car as it drives down the street.  You only hear the conversation.  Doesn't sound like much as I write this, but it's pretty neat on screen.  To me, anyway.    

The screenplay was by McQueen and Gillian Flynn, author of "Gone Girl", so the blood lines for this movie are pretty good.

Really good movie.  Three Stars from The Grandstander.