Women often pay the price for men’s transgressions—or at least, that’s the conclusion Steve McQueen comes to in his raw, tense, and spectacularly acted action thriller Widows. The film is set in the aftermath of a deadly Chicago robbery that claims the lives of four men who leave behind grieving wives and unpaid debt. Crime boss Jamal Manning (Brian Tyree Henry) wants Veronica Rawlins (Viola Davis) to fulfill her deceased husband Harry’s (Liam Neeson) obligations, forcing her to assemble the other wives to carry out their spouses’ final heist. While the burden of executing the robbery is chiefly on Veronica, all the women have to come to grips with the perilous consequences of their husbands’ secret lives.
While the women are hesitant to get involved in criminal activities, they don’t have many other options: Linda’s (Michelle Rodriguez) husband sold her dress shop out from underneath her without her permission; Alice (Elizabeth Debicki) has no marketable skills, so she’s unable to provide for herself; and Belle (Cynthia Erivo), who initially works as Linda’s babysitter, joins the heist because she’s also in dire financial straits. Police protection isn’t possible, given that the city’s corrupt government is in cahoots with the very people attempting to blackmail them. And trying to escape Chicago’s seedy underbelly might hasten their demise. Their best and only option is to pull off a robbery big enough to repay their husbands’ debts and keep their own families afloat.
In Widows, these women’s actions are driven not just by the need to get even, but by their need to survive.
Betrayal is intrinsic to Widows: In order to right their husbands’ wrongs, they must accept that they were intentionally left in the dark by the men they loved. It’s a more extreme version of the internal motivation that leads Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock), in Ocean’s 8, to orchestrate a splashy heist during the Met Gala. Sure, diamonds are a girl’s best friend, but is there anything more satisfying than framing the spineless man who sent you to prison for a crime he committed? Even the dizzying plot twists in 2014’s Gone Girl center around Amy Elliott Dunne (Rosamund Pike) exacting revenge on a cheating husband who takes her for granted. When men err in these narratives, women feel justified in wrestling back control of their lives, even in ways that are unambiguously criminal. In Widows, these women’s actions are driven not just by the need to get even, but by their need to survive.