Widows – 5

Better than Ocean’s Eight, but not by much, this female heist movie had improbabilities piled on implausibilities, with enough loose threads to make a mitten. Viola Davis and Liam Neeson seemed an unlikely pair from the get-go (with Neeson overexposed in the trailers before the show), but the idea that the other widows would go along with her was topped only by their instantaneous competence, which in turn was superseded by plot twists from out of the blue, thanks perhaps to screenwriter Gillian Flynn. The movie’s saving grace was the supporting performances of Michelle Rodriguez and the gorgeous Elizabeth Debicki. Perhaps to appease the unwritten rules governing Hollywood, there were gratuitous shots of cigarette smoking and female nudity.