Widows Review: 6 Ups & 3 Downs

3. It's Shockingly Brutal

While just about every heist movie has some measure of violence, McQueen does a wonderful job keeping the blood-letting infrequent and making it all the more bracingly effective as a result.

From the savage opening death of the widows' husbands, to Kaluuya's Jatemme Manning brutally murdering and assaulting various adversaries, the violence never feel disposable or cartoonish, with a jolting grittiness that proves frequently surprising.

McQueen's no stranger to depicting stark atrocities on screen, of course, and his penchant for detached formalism serves him well here. Even when the story gets too daft for its own good, the life-threatening stakes always feel palpable.