Steve McQueen's "Widows" is ready to roll

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 As far as I'm concerned, Writer-Director Steve McQueen is a perfect 3 for 3 ("Hunger," "Shame," "12 Years A Slave") in his short filmmaking career. It has been 5 years since "Slave" won the Best Picture Oscar, but it looks like McQueen has decided to tackle the 'lightest' topic of his career, at least by his standards, a bank robbery/heist flick.

 An adaptation of a Gillian Flynn novel, "Widows" is McQueen the major studio filmmaker, for which I am very much excited for. Earlier in the summer the trailer had hinted at a rather genre-y film. I wrote:

 "The trailer makes the film look like a generic heist film, albeit a well-shot one, but don't we expect more from McQueen than this? I know there are, no doubt, plenty of potential socio-political topics to tackle here but doesn't the mixture of McQueen and the pulp source material from Flynn feel almost too facile?"

 Well,  A new trailer has been released and, it seems like, we're right back on track. This is the movie I wanted to see. It sure has me amped up in catching it at TIFF during the first week of September.  I understand why they skipped Telluride and Venice and just decided on Toronto, it just feels like the right festival to world premiere this kind of genre film and get a good boost for its Oscar chances.


McQueen (“12 Years a Slave,” “Shame”) directs from a script he co-wrote with Gillian Flynn (who also adapted her own novel “Gone Girl”). The film stars Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Colin Farrell, Liam Neeson, Daniel Kaluuya, and Robert Duvall.

 Here’s the official synopsis:
“From Academy Award®-winning director Steve McQueen (“12 Years a Slave”) and co-writer and bestselling author Gillian Flynn (“Gone Girl”) comes a blistering, modern-day thriller set against the backdrop of crime, passion, and corruption. “Widows” is the story of four women with nothing in common except a debt left behind by their dead husbands’ criminal activities. Set in contemporary Chicago, amid a time of turmoil, tensions build when Veronica (Oscar® winner Viola Davis), Alice (Elizabeth Debicki), Linda (Michelle Rodriguez) and Belle (Cynthia Erivo) take their fate into their own hands and conspire to forge a future on their own terms.  “Widows” also stars Liam Neeson, Colin Farrell, Robert Duvall, Daniel Kaluuya, Lukas Haas and Brian Tyree Henry.”