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Cynthia, Michelle,
Viola and Elizabeth
were determined to
make crime payCrook’s wife Viola Davis has some unfinished business to attend to...
PRE
MIER
E^OF^ T
HE^WEE
K^WIDOWS
Steve McQueen, Oscar-winning
director of 12 Years a Slave, teams
up with Gone Girl author Gillian
Flynn for this heist thriller based
on Lynda La Plante’s iconic 1980s
ITV series.
Updating the action to Chicago,
the film casts a steely Viola Davis
as the debt-strapped widow of a
master criminal (Liam Neeson)
who recruits fellow grieving
spouses Michelle Rodriguez and
Elizabeth Debicki, plus feisty
outsider Cynthia Erivo, to
complete the robbery planned
by her late husband.
Unfortunately, the dead men
stole £2million from local
gangster turned on-the-make
politician Jamal Manning (Brian
Tyree Henry). And he wants his
money back.
As the women slowly put
together their plan, all eyes are on
a racially charged local election
pitting African-American
Manning against Irish-American
Jack Mulligan (Colin Farrell), glib
heir to a corrupt political dynasty
in the city. And, as Davis’s
Veronica knows, it’s her crew’s
very invisibility, as women, that
gives them an edge. ‘The best thing
we have going for us is being who
we are. No one thinks we have the
balls to pull this off.’
Beautifully shot by McQueen’s
regular cinematographer Sean
Bobbitt, the movie doesn’t entirely
pull off its mix of gloss and grit. Its
twists are too blatantly signposted
to generate skin-prickling
suspense and the heist itself
doesn’t pack the punch you expect.
Yet if the story’s political, racial
and gender subtext sometimes acts
as a drag on the action, it gives the
film a depth and richness other
films of the genre often lack. In
the end, though, with Davis on
magisterial form and with strong
support from her female co-stars
and also from the likes of Daniel
Kaluuya and Robert Duvall, it’s the
terrific performances that make the
film so rewarding. 2018, 15, 130MIN
CRIME THRILLER
Friday, Sky Premiere HD, 11.15am
& 8pm; Sky Heists HD,
4.30pm & 3.15am 4