Widows (2018, Steve McQueen) (Patreon)

The year's most didactic film, so intent on getting its points across that McQueen even straps the camera onto a vehicle's hood, pointed away from the characters speaking within (and robotically panning to the best vantage points!), so that we don't miss how speedily Chicago neighborhoods metamorphose from rundown to ritzy. (Can't believe how many people admire this shot, especially as a lot of the same folks complained about how heavy-handed Killing Them Softly was.) No doubt I'm influenced by knowing that it's adapted from a British miniseries (unseen by me), but this really does feel like someone tried to cram an entire TV's season's worth of complex character dynamics and political intrigue into two hours, necessarily skimping on everything. Nothing about the intersection of crime and campaigning feels credible (in part because of the emphasis on Kaluuya's sociopathic enforcer, who belongs in another kind of movie entirely), yet so much time gets expended on it—and on other blunt yet meager subplots, e.g. Debicki and Haas—that the relationships among the women never really progress beyond narrative convenience. Which is a huge problem, since the final scene clearly indicates that we're meant to care about whether the princess and the basketcase will remain friends now that detention is over. Theoretically love that ending, but it didn't land here because Alice practically gets more screen time with her mother than she does with Veronica. What we see of these widows is all business, a means to an end. So, too, the film.

All of that's Ed, it's still reasonably gripping, thanks mostly to Davis and Debicki. (There's a sharp cut on the latter stuffing a hot dog in her mouth following a triumph that's among my favorite Moments Out Of Time this year.) Was a bit surprised by how simple the heist is—its key element, blackmailing a security dude for the safe code, had already been accomplished before the movie even begins—but individual planning sequences involving subtle and not-so-subtle manipulation of others' emotions are shrewdly effective. I'd have preferred more incisive gender dynamics and less of McQueen circling the camera around a couple of dudes rapping while I wait for Kaluuya's Widmark knockoff to "unexpectedly" gun them down mid-flow. Sure, you need to establish a serious threat, but choking the dog probably sufficed.

Few other quick notes that involve MAJOR SPOILERS:

• At one point, Jamal instructs Jatemme not to harm the widows, saying that he doesn't need that kind of heat, or words to that effect. Then in the next breath he notes that they're dead—or at least Veronica is dead—should she fail to deliver his $2 million in the two weeks she has remaining. This does not make a whole lotta sense. Is the heat he's worried about gonna miraculously dissipate in two weeks?

• So much for like a hundred movies in which a criminal gets shot and whether or not to take him to a hospital (where he'll surely be arrested) becomes a significant plot point. Turns out you can just say it was a drive-by and nobody will investigate, apparently. At least in 2018 Chicago.

• Casting Neeson was a mistake imo. I knew something was up there, because it seemed unlikely that he'd accept such a nothing role. Reveal was nicely done, though, apart from the contrivance of Coon's character attending to the baby with the door closed for so long.

(My dream version of this movie would have three or four major male stars as the husbands, and would appear to be about them, with the widows-to-be initially looking like standard-issue appendages. But that only works if the marketing is misleading beyond belief.)