‘Widows’ is a white-knuckle thriller

Posted on November 23, 2018

By MARK VIOLA

When I was watching the new heist film “Widows,” I couldn’t help but think of the Academy Award-winning film, “The Departed.” Like this film, “The Departed” was a remake — of a Korean police drama — that was given such a sense of place within its Boston setting by director Martin Scorese that it’s hard to imagine it anywhere else.

In the case of “Widows,” the film is a remake of a British television mini-series from 1983. Director Steve McQueen (“12 Years a Slave”), a Brit himself, injects his version of the story with a similar sense of place, only this time it’s Chicago and its seedy politics.

The film’s gritty, grimy story of a group of women trying to survive in the dark underbelly of their city becomes a compelling, white-knuckle thrill-ride of a heist flick that will keep you both guessing and on the edge of your seat until the very end.

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