Now, that sounds pretty pulpy compared to McQueen’s other high-minded work, and I'm happy to report that the result is glorious, glorious trash in the best way, a roller coaster ride from start to finish that doesn't afford anyone in the theater a moment to breathe. You wouldn’t necessarily expect this from McQueen, whose career to this point had been marked by measured and reserved and profoundly serious dramas starring Michael Fassbender like Hunger and Shame. And he spends no time at all blowing all of that to hell (literally, there are more than one explosions in the opening sequence) to make his intentions clear. This isn’t the sort of movie that’s going to have an unbroken 20 minute shot of Fassbender discussing the finer aspects of civil disobedience with a priest. It’s the sort of movie that makes sure Viola Davis lives in a white apartment and wears white outfits and carries an adorable white dog in most of her scenes just to show off her uncompromising blackness. It’s the sort of movie that puts 6’3” Elizabeth Debicki in heels while she’s working as a high society escort despite the fact that she already towered over the entire cast without them. It’s the sort of movie that makes sure to put Cynthia Erivo in tank tops so she can show off her muscle-bound upper body while she hits a heavy bag. It’s the sort of movie where all the men are sleazy garbage and all the women aren’t just going to let them wreck their lives and get away with it.

Davis is an undeniable tour de force, not just the ringleader pulling together this diffuse team of women, but also a symbol for oppressed women who have been little more than side characters in heist and action films for decades. We’ve been subjected to that trope for so long, the woman whose entire purpose in a film is to fret about their man while he does something dangerous (see also Jennifer Morrison in Warrior, Anna Kendrick in End of Watch, Natalie Portman in Thor: The Dark World just to name a few). Widows decides to have that flashpoint be where the movie starts instead of ends, creating a wonderful on the formula that still manages to fit in all the crosses and double crosses and triple crosses you’d expect from a movie like this. It’s similar to this summer’s Ocean’s 8 in that respect, but far more muscular and defiant. Ocean’s 8 went for glitz and glamour and slickness (which makes sense; you don’t get slicker than Soderbergh’s Oceans movies). Widows shoves a gun in your face and dares you to do something about it.