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| Courtesy of 20th Century Fox |
(Rated R for violence, language throughout, and some sexual content/nudity.)
At first glance, Steve McQueen and Gillian Flynn might not seem like the most natural collaborators. He’s best known for bleak arthouse fare like the sex addiction drama Shame and 12 Years a Slave, while she’s the novelist-turned-screenwriter responsible for twisty pulp thrillers like Gone Girl and Sharp Objects. However, their new heist drama Widows proves that their two strengths work better together than many viewers might expect.
Based on a 1993 British miniseries of the same name, the story centers on Veronica (Viola Davis), Linda (Michelle Rodriguez) and Alice (Elizabeth Debicki), three Chicago women whose husbands (Liam Neeson, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo and Jon Bernthal) are killed in the middle of a robbery. As they grieve, Veronica is approached by a powerful gangster (Brian Tyree Henry) who says that her husband stole $2 million in cash from him, which was destroyed in the heist’s aftermath.
Since he’s in the middle of a high-profile election, running against an influential politician (Colin Farrell), he gives Veronica one month to come up with the money or he’ll send his psychopathic brother (Daniel Kaluuya) after her. With nowhere else to turn, Veronica teams up with her fellow widows – along with an unlikely getaway driver (Cynthia Erivo) – to find a way out of danger.
Granted, the screenplay co-written by Flynn and McQueen isn’t seamless. Widows straddles the fence between classy social drama and trashy B-movie so long that it never feels tonally consistent. It bounces around all over the place, as if McQueen can’t decide what genre he feels most comfortable in. There are also quite a few characters and subplots that simply disappear instead of resolve. When the movie ended, I found myself asking a colleague about several confusing aspects (including a fuzzy conclusion) that I don’t think were designed to be purposely ambiguous.
But most of the time, I was mesmerized by the stellar performances, razor-sharp dialogue and McQueen’s compelling direction – especially his frequent use of closeups. Davis is outstanding as always, but Debicki is the big standout for me. Her character is a woman who grew up in an abusive home and escaped by marrying an abusive husband. For her, the situation she finds herself in is far from a tragedy. It’s an opportunity for her to start a new life – one where she never has to be a victim again.
Watching Alice’s empowering transformation over the course of the movie is worth the price of admission by itself. Factor in equally strong work from Rodriguez, Erivo, Farrell, Neeson, Henry, a scenery-chewing Robert Duvall and a terrifying Kaluuya, and you’ve got one of the year’s strongest ensembles.
Widows is getting rave reviews, but I’m curious how audiences are going to respond. It’s not the action-packed thriller that trailers are selling. In fact, the big robbery doesn’t take place until the last 15 minutes. Instead, viewers are in for a slow-burn drama with some intriguing reveals scattered throughout a methodically-paced narrative. It worked for me overall, but I could see some people with short attention spans getting frustrated that they’re watching a different movie than the one they signed up for.
Grade: B
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
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| Courtesy of Netflix |
A new film by Joel and Ethan Coen is cause for celebration. Whether delivering a ridiculous comedy like Hail, Caesar! or Burn After Reading (an eerily prescient satire of our current political moment), or a somber meditation on tragedy like No Country for Old Men or Inside Llewyn Davis, their stories are always interesting, darkly funny commentaries on the hypocrisies baked into the American experiment.
The Coens’ latest, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, is a Western anthology that is hilarious, existential, heartbreaking and scary in equal measure. Because most people will see it on Netflix (although it’s getting a tiny limited release to qualify for awards season) and because it’s six short stories rather than one sprawling narrative, detractors might think it’s a “lesser” Coen brothers project. But that couldn’t be further from the truth; it’s the epitome of the filmmakers’ penchant for tonal shifts, boiled down to quick morality tales.
Quite literally unfolding from a storybook, the first and titular installment centers on a singing cowboy (Tim Blake Nelson) who turns out to be just as adept with a six-shooter as a guitar. The darkly comic “Near Algodones,” proves appearances can be deceiving when a robber (James Franco) squares off against a feisty bank teller (Stephen Root).
The first big tonal shift arrives with “Meal Ticket,” a bleak vignette about a small theatre troupe (Liam Neeson and Harry Melling) that journeys from town to town with rapidly diminishing returns. Next is “All Gold Canyon,” the most visual and deliberately paced tale in which a grizzled prospector (Tom Waits) finds gold in an Edenic valley.
“The Gal Who Got Rattled” is the longest and most poignant chapter, in which a sheltered young woman (Zoe Kazan) finds romance with a charming cowboy (Bill Heck) while traveling across the country in a wagon train. Finally, the Coens bring the proceedings to a close with “The Mortal Remains,” an old-fashioned campfire tale about five disparate travelers (Chelcie Ross, Tyne Daly, Saul Rubinek, Jonjo O’Neill and Brendan Gleeson) stuck together in the same stagecoach. It starts out hilarious, thanks to a phenomenal monologue from veteran character actor Ross and some killer reaction shots, and gradually transforms into something more chilling.
On the surface, the six tales don’t have much in common aside from their Western settings. However, a closer look reveals that they’re all connected by sudden, graphic violence that reminds viewers about the indiscriminate nature of death. It comes for us all eventually, despite our best efforts to ward it off or distract ourselves from its inevitability.
That might sound like a downer (and there’s no escaping that some of the vignettes are tough), but anyone familiar with the Coens know that even their most depressing stories are still mesmerizing, humorous, full of clever wordplay and packed with deeper meaning. I can’t wait to teach this one in some of my college classes.
Performances are stellar across the board, although Nelson and Kazan are the big standouts. Carter Burwell’s score and Bruno Delbonnel’s cinematography are also outstanding. There are some startling artificial looking visual effects shots, although one could argue that’s an intentional choice considering the storybook narrative device that weaves all the tales together.
Like most of the Coen brothers’ filmography, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is bound to be divisive. However, there’s plenty here for movie lovers to appreciate. My biggest complaint is that I didn’t get to see it on the big screen. Still, there’s no doubt it’ll reach a much larger audience on Netflix.
Grade: A-
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