Movie Review: Widows

Interesting "heist" action film; kept me guessing

Violence: Especially at the beginning, mostly implied Rating: PG-13 (I'm not sure how it missed R, though)

I rented this on DVD and rather liked it. It starts out with a bang (and an explosion) as four men, planning to rob a gallery for a $300million Vermeer are killed in a staged traffic accident (with requisite explosion). But one escapes alive...

Segue to the wives being told their husbands are dead. Then one wife, Dolly (Mercedes Ruehl, played very well) decides to avenge her husband and the other men. She plans to finish the heist and draws the other widows into the plan.

That's the simple story, but there are several twists to the plot; both the viewer and the characters discover that things aren't always what they seem.

One of my favorite scenes - watch for "dueling dancers" in the warehouse. The director had fun with this one.

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June 1, 2003

I had a realization; I think I know the basis for the idea for this movie. In the May 2003 issue of the Readers' Digest is a story about a "stunning art heist" that took place in March 1990. A dozen famous art works were stolen, never recovered. One of the stolen works was Vermeer's The Concert.

The back story for the movie involves an earlier heist, never solved, of over a dozen paintings from a museum in... 1990. The Vermeer in the movie is The Concert.

Movie Review: Widows ( in category Books, Movies, Music ) - posted at Sat, 31 May, 22:54 Pacific | «e»