This film received some decent press last year and it was directed by Steve McQueen who shot to fame following 12 Years a Slave. Given that its three leads are all women and their leader is a black woman, it’s obvious that there’s a female and minority empowerment theme going on in here as well. Yet this is a heist film, not a serious drama, and one expects the requisite excitement and entertainment value from it. This unfortunately is not forthcoming.

A botched robbery ends with the robbers all dead and their wives widowed. But this tragedy is only the beginning of the troubles facing Veronica. the widow of the group’s leader. She learns that they stole from a local gang and the boss Jamal wants his money back. The only item of value her husband left her is a notebook that details every aspect of his heists including the next one that he was planning. With no other recourse, she contacts the other widows who similarly were left in dire straits due to their respective husbands’ deaths. She proposes that they carry out the last planned heist themselves and use the money to solve all of their problems, including paying off Jamal. However this requires them to purchase the needed equipment and learn the skills as the women have never done anything like this before. Meanwhile an added complication is that Jamal himself is running for an election for alderman of the ward against the established Mulligan family.

This makes for a ridiculous scenario in real life but it’s more or less standard fare for thrillers and heist films. This film does open with an appropriately action-packed depiction of the initial heist gone wrong but then it pivots to become something closer to a serious drama. Emphasis is placed on Veronica’s emotional turmoil as she comes to grips with the loss of her beloved husband. To a lesser extent, this goes for the other widows as well as we see how they have been left wanting by their inconsiderate and irresponsible husbands. The director even takes the time to detail the politics of the Chicago ward the story is set in. Jamal tires of the risks of living as a criminal and wants to become responsible while the incumbent Jack Mulligan has to fend off accusations of corruption and the toxic legacy of his father’s decades long grip on power. Ordinarily I would be all over this but the inescapable fact remains that this is all based around a heist plot that is patently implausible and unrealistic! It’s as if you took the story of Ocean’s 11 and tries to film it as if you were making The Wire. I have to applaud McQueen for trying but this combination didn’t work for me at all.

Then there’s how McQueen chooses to empower women by making every male character in the film a terrible person. Every one of the husbands of the female leads are of course unworthy of their wives but then Jamal and his underlings, the Mulligan family and so on, are all monsters. As my wife observed, he seems to be making a point out of showing this group of women being empathetic towards one another’s needs and look out for each other. I’m all for female empowerment but this seems really blunt. There are some nice touches here and there that I appreciate, such as how one of them has to scramble to look for a babysitter in order to attend one of their heist planning sessions. But there’s still the tonal incongruity problem above in having such grounded, day-to-day details in a film with such an over the top plot.

The fact remains that McQueen is a good director, that all of the actors in here turn in excellent performances, and everything is put together very well. So this is by no means bad but I just can’t shake the feeling that McQueen would rather be directing a different kind of film entirely.