Widows Review: 6 Ups & 3 Downs
Another intense winner from Steve McQueen.
The latest film from 12 Years A Slave director Steve McQueen is in UK cinemas now - ahead of its state-side release on November 16 - and the early consensus is that it's another impressive effort from the acclaimed filmmaker with sure-fire awards potential.
Though it makes a number of disappointing detours - almost exclusively in the scripting department - Widows is an undeniably pulsing feat of sublime direction and performance.
While unlikely to see McQueen repeat his previous Oscar success, his execution is about as strong as you could expect from his screenplay co-written with Gillian Flynn.
With one of the year's most stacked casts, a ton of pulse-pounding suspense and a healthy dose of unexpected satire, this is an intriguing compromise between genre and "art-house" filmmaking, even if it can't always reconcile the two.
Simply, if you're craving an extremely up-market presentation of middle-brow material, look no further. Sure to be one of the year's least-pretentious awards contenders, Widows is electrifying, enthralling and sometimes infuriating also...