From Academy Award®-winning director Steve McQueen (“12 Years a Slave”) and co-writer and bestselling author Gillian Flynn (“Gone Girl”) comes a blistering, modern-day thriller set against the backdrop of crime, passion and corruption.
“Widows” is the story of four women with nothing in common except a debt left behind by their dead husbands’ criminal activities. Set in contemporary Chicago, amid a time of turmoil, tensions build when Veronica (Oscar® winner Viola Davis), Linda (Michelle Rodriguez), Alice (Elizabeth Debicki) and Belle (Cynthia Erivo) take their fate into their own hands and conspire to forge a future on their own terms. “Widows” also stars Liam Neeson, Colin Farrell, Robert Duvall, Daniel Kaluuya, Lukas Haas and Brian Tyree Henry.
Plot: Set in contemporary Chicago, amid a time of turmoil, four women with nothing in common except a debt left behind by their dead husbands’ criminal activities, take fate into their own hands, and conspire to forge a future on their own terms.
Director: Steve McQueen
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1
Runtime: 129 min
Rating: Rotten Tomatoes 90% & IMDB 7.2/10
Unboxing (see below)
Special Features:
- Widows Unmasked: A Chicago Story
- Plotting The Heist: The Story
- Assembling The Crew: Production
- The Scene Of The Crime: Locations
- Gallery
4K Blu-Ray Technical Specs:
- Audio: English Dolby Atmos, English Descriptive Audio 5.1, Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 and French Dolby Digital 5.1
- Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish, French
Review & Conclusion:
This movie was shot on 35mm film with Arricam camera’s and given a 4K Digital Intermediate. As per the norm with most UHD releases, it was given a HDR color grade in HDR10 for your viewing pleasure. Since the movie was shot on film you will see a light amount of grain along with some soft shots and tone, but nothing that takes you out of the movie.
This is a movie that is centered around a lot of dialogue, so you’ll get to see what the format shines the best in — up close face shots. With this you will see a lot of facial detail like pores, makeup, blemishes, veins, beard stubble… the works. Since you spend a good amount of time in dialogue you will notice little nuances like the fabric and shine on various types of clothing. For example, the texture of a leather jacket to the material used in a average suit.
Keeping with the idea of multiple shots focusing in on characters — you will get the 3D-like effects on this disc with great depth perception highlighting and bringing the characters towards you while the background fades away. Since this movie was shot on film you’ll get a vibe with the way aspects are highlighted in color and tone — it’s not a crystal clear digital picture, but that’s never a necessity.
Know going in that a lot of this movie takes place at night, so you won’t be blown away by color, but you’ll still appreciate it’s use in the darkness highlighting whatever’s on the screen. You can determine this because when the daytime scenes take place in the same location, the HDR starts to pop in places it wasn’t allowed to before.
Something that I noted was a scene that took place in Chapter 16. Here the black levels are amazing — this specific scene follows two of the women sitting in a car staking out a house. You have a black car with black interior, their both wearing black clothes and the car is in the shade. The detail is super sharp, every shadow is contrasted perfectly and the HDR looks great with it to. This continues they leave the car and make their way to the house — the green in the ivy, plants and grass + little things like the red hue in the brick stand out nicely.
This is good use for what the majority of the film puts forth; great black levels, HDR, detail and sharpness.
Overall this is a step up from the Blu-Ray and I recommend you pick this up to add to your UHD collection. Steve McQueen keeps you engaged with not only the strong performances from a super-talented cast, but the plot that holds you from beginning to end. This is the type of movie that hits in all the right places — great movie and great visuals. You need to own it!
Cheers,
Matt.
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