This week for the final week of May since we have FIVE Sundays this month, we decided to do a special review where we each had our girlfriends write and watch a review for the same movie. Without further ado, here they are:

Widows (2018)

Hello, everyone! My name is Sarah, and I’m Seann’s girlfriend. We thought it would be fun for London (Max’s GF) and I to review the movie this week, since there’s a fifth week to the month!

First off, I would like to say that I generally find more joy in cinema than Seann does, and that I figured I’d be scoring this movie higher than he would because of it. I haven’t asked him his thoughts on it, because I didn’t want it to dampen my spirits, but honestly I don’t think I’ll be rating this much higher than him.

So the title is very captivating in and of itself; do we see them become widows, or were they before the movie starts? What happens that hurts them so terribly that their story is movie worthy? Well, it starts with a scene between Veronica (Viola Davis) and Harry (Liam Neeson) in a bed together, open-mouthed kissing with significant amounts of visible tongue. This just made me very uncomfortable, as it felt very forced and frankly not very passionate. I thought she was either his mistress that his widow would find out about later, or that she was a lady of the night who was seeing ‘Johns’ after her husband’s passing. Nope! They turned out to be married!

The next twenty minutes went from her interrupting him in the shower, to him being in a criminal heist, to a woman, Linda, (Michele Rodriguez) arguing with her husband, Carlos, (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) about the validity of her business, which sells quinceanera attire, and at some point we see the heist end in an entirely all-too-dramatic depicting of an explosion that was supposedly caused by policemen shooting at the gas tank of the vehicle Harry was driving, which also housed Carlos, Florek (Jon Bernthal), and someone else from their team who had so little impact on the movie I don’t even recognize him or his character name from the casting list. But clearly he was a valued member of their crew. Honestly, the first twenty-ish minutes are a series of confusing and seemingly disjointed vignettes that both add to the backstory and the lack of cohesiveness of this movie.

At twenty minutes in, we finally see something of consequence. In one of the stupid world-building scenes, this random white guy, Jack Mulligan, (Collin Farrell) goes to a church to meet with a random black guy, Jamal Manning, (Bryan Tyree Henry) about the political campaign for the 18th (I think?) District that they’re both running for. So, finally, Jamal and his sidekick Jatemme (Daniel Kaluuya) decide to take action, and Jamal goes to Victoria’s apartment after Harry’s funeral to inform her that her late husband had stolen two million dollars from him, and she had exactly one month to pay it back, or he would be coming for her. In this scene, he had been holding her dumb little West Highland White Terrier (who has a terrible cut for its face imho) in his arms, and then began to strangle the dog for no real reason while making his demands. Like Bro, she already knew you were serious, leave the puppy out of it.

We then see Linda lose her shop because Carlos had been gambling their money instead of paying rent, and leveraged the shop to settle his debts, which were now being collected on. Linda is up a creek, and has two young children at home to care for.

We also see Alice (Elizabeth Debiki), who is the widow of Florek, being told by her mother Angieszka (Jacki Weaver) to become an escort to pay her bills.

Throughout this, we see Veronica’s late husband’s driver Bash (Garrett Dillahunt) give her a piece of paper that Harry wanted her to have, in case anything happens to him. She follows it to a safe box, which has a notebook in it. She is also repeatedly telling Bash to find her the names of the other widows. She reads the notebook and realizes it not only carries the plans of Harry’s previous heists, but also of his next one. There’s at some point a man who works at a bowling alley telling her not to mind the notebook, because people aren’t worth trusting, and that he’s in a wheelchair because of a debt he owed. “This isn’t your world,” he tells her. She doesn’t listen, and continues searching for the other widows.

The next scene I remember is Linda and Alice at a spa, talking about ordering champagne on Veronica’s dime because she invited them. Veronica arrives and asks Linda for her name, then assumes Alice must be Amanda (hint, she’s not). When the other two ask who Amanda is, Veronica responds “Let’s hope it doesn’t matter,” which is always promising.

They end up in a steam room that Veronica guided them into. They’re talking about the potential payoff of pulling the heist in Harry’s notebook, and a random woman enters. They stop talking until Veronica gets up and says something about what a good job opportunity it is, while dumping water onto the stones, and scaring the random white woman away. Yay! But now Linda and Alice are saying they don’t know if they’re committed, and Veronica having given them each wads of cash with an address in the middle and instructions to arrive at 11pm sharp a few days from then.

And then we see a previously unknown character, Belle (Cynthia Arivo) get home after a long day of work at a hair salon (my sympathies, that’s hard)  only to answer her phone and leave her child behind to take a babysitting gig for ~drumroll~ Linda! And immediately hits it off with Linda’s two babies.

Alice ends up going on an escort date with David (Lukas Haas), and they spend most of the evening talking about architecture and buildings (he makes buildings or something) until they retire to a hotel together. Good for her, I guess. Alice shows up at the address slightly late, with Veronica and Linda both commenting on how she’s wearing evening attire. At this point, Veronica assigns them both tasks about the heist to be completed in a few day’s time. Alicwe buys the van, and talks to a Ukrainian woman to find their guns, talking to a woman in a thick accent and claiming to be a mail-order bride. The woman’s daughter says “Mama, you always say a gun is a girl’s best friend” and convinces the woman to help Alice find the three Glocks she needs, along with their ammo. And when Linda struggles to find which building the schematics are for, Alice takes over and finds them by utilizing David. He tells her the basics of what kind of building (a bunker) they’re for, and roughly time period or place or whatever to find it. She also asks her to be exclusive, which she’s obviously hesitant about as her husband just died a few weeks ago, and he seems disappointed by this. Whatever.

At some point in the frey, Jamal and Jatemme discover that Veronica has Harry’s journal. I think this is after two dudes are caught rapping in Jamal’s shipping boxes, and Jatemme blames them for letting Harry steal the money. He give4s a sharp showdown if the dude who’s raping, then shoots him in the face. He turns to the dude who was beat boxing and tells him to run, only to shoot him in the back. Honestly? 2 Mil is a lot of money. I don’t know if Jatemme’s behavior was truly irrational. But! He also extracts the journal’s whereabouts from the bowling alley guy but shooting him and throwing his wheelchair farther away from him. But at this point, we know Veronica is doubly up a creek. They change the timeline for the payback from one month to two weeks, and send her Bash’s ring as a promise (spoiler; Bash is dead now and never seen again).

Veronica panics that they won’t be able to do this without a driver, after finding out that Alice can’t drive. Instead of reassigning Linda to be the driver, she demands that the girls (who already think she’s a bitch) find a driver for them. Linda suggests Belle, and Veronica has beef with the fact it’s someone she doesn’t know(despite not knowing even the names of the other girls only a week ago). Belle proves her mettle, and they continue with the plan. Belle proves very good at parkour and helps them track the movements of the guards, which the other girls wouldn’t be able to do.

The heist itself goes mostly well, and they all make it out alive, only to have Jatemme in the passenger seat pointing a gun at Belle. There’s a scene where he’s driving away and the girls are all four standing at the side of the road, deflated.

Then we follow Jatemme driving away with the FIVE million he’s taken from the girls, which is the two for Harry’s debt and an additional three the girls were going to split, and he’s feeling victorious. Until he gets rear ended by a car close behind him. While he dies in the van, the girls grab their money and get back into the car that killed him. They leave with all their cash (good for them!).

At some point in the chaos, Veronica uninvitedly takes her Westie to a stranger’s house, and that stranger is Amanda. I don’t remember much about the scene other than Amanda had a three month old baby who needed quieting. The Westie goes to a door and starts barking the way she does when she smells something that smells like Harry. Veronica follows, has a long pause, and then leaves with her dog before Amanda comes out of the baby’s room. We see after she leaves that Harry is in the room, alive, and hiding from his wife. He is likely the father of Amanda’s child. Even worse, we see a flashback of Jack Mulligan telling Harry good job on stealing the money, but that he needs it in his bank account and not just out of Jamal’s to mean anything. “Or you’ll be alive again, and not in a good way.” We also see a flashback of the son Veronica and Harry had, driving a car. Harry calls him and tells him there’s an anniversary gift for Veronica in the glove box, which the boy pulls out. He then makes an illegal U-Turn to bring the gift back to his dad. He’s pulled over by the police, and when he reaches for the giftbox to put it back in the glovebox, he’s shot. In all the flashbacks hinting at their child, it seems Harry is blaming Veronica for his death. In the flashback depicting the actual scene, it’s clearly the fault of the police for being trigger-happy on a young black man. And if either parent were to blame, it would be Harry’s fault. He’s harassing the teenager to come home immediately, and his emphasis on the giftbox is what triggers the boy to try and put it back in the glovebox – the action that got him shot. Yet, it’s always portrayed as Veronica’s fault.

After seeing a scene of Harry putting a dummy in the driver’s seat, escaping out the side of the building, and help trap his crew in a fiery explosion of death, and after seeing him blame his wife for the fact their son was mixed race, in a final act of being an asshat, Harry shows up again as Veronica returns home. He takes the money from her, tells her it’s her fault that things are the way they are, and leaves. He’s now robbed her of her child, robbed her of her home, and now robbed her of the work he wouldn’t have been able to do. Veronica is left childless, husbandless, moneyless, and hopeless. The whole story was just Veronica trying to find peace while working with the widows of her husband’s group, and ending up entirely impoverished,

Out of five stars, I give this a one. It’s not the female empowerment movie other critics will tell you it is ( Alice literally sees no option but to be an escort, which is fatalistic and not empowerment, Linda hates being a single mom, and Belle needs  money more than she needs mother-daughter memories). Yeah, ladies pulled off a heist, but as a woman, it all felt like it was in the shadow of men, and none of it felt honestly strengthening.

-1 mallard/5

-Sarah

Hello, London here. Since May has five weeks, you get the joy of having my presence on the blog this week. The guys decided it would be a great idea to have their partners write the reviews this week (I cannot speak for Sarah, but I am not sure how great of an idea this was but I will try my best). I would like to preface that it does not take much for me to enjoy a movie, but it also does not take much for me to feel like a movie was a complete waste of my time. I am definitely not a movie critic, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. 

The movie we watched this week was Widows (2018), directed by Steve McQueen, and not to spoil my review that I know everyone is looking forward to reading, but I did thoroughly enjoy this movie. I was very excited going into this movie because I love Viola Davis and Cynthia Erivo. I was obsessed with Netflix’s How To Get Away With Murder in high school, so I was looking forward to seeing her in this. How ironic that her character in HTGAWM would have been very proud of her character in Widows (2018). I went into this with very little knowledge of this movie, but I did know the husbands died in a heist and after their death the women were going to be taking over said heist. So actually I guess I did basically know the entire premise of the movie. I will say I did expect the movie to be more on the “bad bitches taking over for their husbands” with some funny banter and light scenes. Instead, I was just sad and stressed the whole time. 

Okay enough rambling, let’s get into my actual thoughts on the film. First off, I loved the theme of “women empowerment” throughout the movie. Viola Davis, who plays Veronica Rawlings, was phenomenal. A specific scene that sticks out in my head is when she is in the bathroom having a mental breakdown and then immediately “pulls it together”. That scene was a perfect way to showcase womanhood. As a woman, society expects you to act a certain way even in your worst moments. Another example is when Alice, portrayed by Elizabeth Debicki, slaps Veronica back after being abused by everyone in her life and she says “I’m done being treated like shit. Not again. Not by you, not by anyone.” I literally said “it’s about time she hits back.” I also would like to note that Debicki was also great in this movie. I am unfamiliar with anything else she is in but I thoroughly enjoyed her in this film. 

Last December, I listened to Cynthia Erivo’s autobiography “Simply More: A Book for Anyone Who Has Been Told They’re Too Much” and she talks about this movie and how it was her bridge from Broadway to Hollywood. She also discusses how it was very refreshing to be a woman of color playing a character, Belle, who has her own path and isn’t just a character whose sole purpose is to support a male character. I also found it very interesting that her character is a runner and she is also a runner in real life but Maxwell told me he already knew that so I guess it wasn’t the cool revelation I thought it was. One of my favorite things about her character is the scene where she holds her own with Viola Davis’s character and gives it right back to her, and in the end they both ended up having a mutual respect for one another. Anyway, I do wish her character had more screen time but I did love every scene that she was in. I would think it’s very obvious she was my favorite character in the entire movie. 

This movie also had many scenes that made me think “Wow, I love the way this was shot.” The scene where Jack Mulligan, played by Colin Farrell, is headed home after his campaign speech is one that I thought was a great way to show how far apart the poor communities are from the rich neighborhood. The scene is shot outside of the car and you do not see the actors, just the car driving Jack home. To me it was a great way to show how Jack claims he is representing his community, when really that couldn’t be further from the truth. At the end of the movie, the scene with Veronica and Alice in the restaurant was an incredibly beautiful shot. 

Obviously I enjoyed this movie, but that is not to say I loved every aspect. At times, the story line became difficult to follow and there were many scenes that I felt had no relevance to the plot of the movie. For example, the rap battle was just odd to me and I still have no clue what significance the guy he shot and killed had. Now, that might be because at that point I was just cringing at them rapping in the middle of a gymnasium and not paying attention, but who knows. I also felt that a lot of the movie was for the most part very predictable. Like how one of the only good guys in the entire movie, Bash played by Garret Dillahunt dies. As soon as Veronica received a package I said “Is it the ring?” – Guess what? It was. Harry being alive was a bit of a shock to me, but not that crazy. I will say I was shocked when Jatemme, portrayed by Daniel Kaluuya, was there after they pulled off the heist. His death was the second most satisfying death. What do I think was number one? Well, we will get to that momentarily. Let me touch a little more on Daniel Kaluuya. His acting in this movie was very good. His character honestly terrified me and made me nervous each time he was on my screen wondering “what is he going to do now?” To my knowledge, I have only ever seen him in Get Out (2017) but this movie made me interested in seeing other things he is in. 

Now, let’s discuss the big plot twist of the movie. The movie begins with Harry Rawlings, played by none other than Liam Neeson, Veronica’s husband, dying after a high-speed chase with the cops. He is driving the van that gets blown up shortly after. Hence, making Veronica one of the “Widows” and invoking the entire plot of this movie. Well, in a somewhat shocking turn of events, thanks to the actual star of this movie (Veronica’s dog) we discover that he is in fact still alive and set his “friends/colleagues” up to be killed. From this twist, we get a really bad ass scene at the end of Veronica having to confront Harry. Let me just say, if that scene had gone any other way, this movie would have gotten 1.5 mallards from me. 

My biggest qualm with this movie is that the women end up pulling off the heist in the end and have all this money now. However, they choose to stay in Chicago? Linda, played by Michelle Rodriguez, gets her store back. Which, happy for her, sure. However, I watched this movie with my best friend, Kaley, and we both just looked at each other and agreed that we would have probably sought out a better store front. To each their own, I guess. I just think I wouldn’t want to stay in a city where I just committed a huge crime that could easily be tied back to me. Because let’s be real, while they did a good job of covering their tracks and planting the gun on Harry at the end, I just feel like the police would have more questions about the entire situation. 

Widows (2018) has a score of 6.8 out of 10 on IMDB, a Rotten Tomatoes tomatometer score of 91%, and a Letterboxd score of 3.6 out of 5. Personally, I agree with these ratings. I think this movie was fun to watch and it kept my attention the entire time. Kaley and I were both on the edge of our seats most of the movie. I also felt like the movie touched on issues that can be difficult to portray in the correct way without coming off as insulting, and they did that very well. I would absolutely recommend this movie to anyone considering it. 

-3.5 mallards/5

-London