A heist movie about more than the cash

WIDOWS DECLARES ITS INTENTIONS EARLY. In the film’s opening moments, a career thief named Harry (Liam Neeson) and his wife Veronica (Viola Davis) share a passionate, prolonged kiss. Director Steve McQueen then cuts quickly back and forth between their intimate embrace and the chaos of one of Harry’s robberies as it goes awry. There’s a violent shoot-out, and the crew is killed. Veronica and three other women are left widowed. It’s a startling sequence—but the intensity of the kiss may surprise audiences more than the bloodshed.

“You don’t see couples over 40 kissing like that onscreen,” says Davis. “And you definitely don’t see interracial couples kissing like that.” The scene, she says, captures the stakes of the film. “It wakes people up to the fact that this isn’t a typical action movie,” she says. “They’re not just going to be able to eat their popcorn and enjoy watching