Steve McQueen's (12 Years a Slave/Hunger) follow up to his Best Picture winner is a heist film told from the female perspective. Inspired by a British series McQueen saw on the BBC in the 80's, this American remake transports the story of a failed robbery & the men who lost their lives committing it to our shores & opens the tale w/side elements of politics & gangsterism to give the film a more deeper set of aesthetics to play with. Enter the women of the tale, who are the wives, girlfriends or significant others to the criminals who initially bought the farm, now being pressured by the pair of crime lord brothers who were robbed to make good on the failed theft. When the lead thief's detailed robbery diary pops up, our main heroine, played by Oscar winner Viola Davis, comes up w/a plan to pull the next score themselves in order to pay their debt & have something for a rainy day. What could have been a typical masculinization of a gang of chicks kicking ass & taking names becomes a dialectic between the realities of crime whether socio-political, racial or in this case gender & the notion of taking your foes for granted. A brilliant cast featuring Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, & newcomer Cynthia Erivo hit all the right notes in this tense, smart thriller which is damn well near perfect.
