Set It Off (1996)

A heist movie that understands the real crime is what society did to these women before they ever picked up a gun.

I love this movie. I thought it was a little long, but it’s an incredible heist film that manages to be poignant, political, and a genuinely great buddy movie all at once. The stars - Jada Pinkett, Queen Latifah, Vivica A. Fox, and Kimberly Elise - are all incredible, so hot, and bring real depth to what could have been one-dimensional roles. The action is great too.

What makes this work is how clearly it understands that these women aren’t villains.

They’re victims of a system designed to crush them at every turn. Dead-end jobs, predatory banking, racist policing, the gutting of social services - the movie lays out exactly why these women feel like crime is their only option. And it doesn’t judge them for it. It empathizes with them while also showing the tragedy of how this all ends. This makes me yearn for these mid-90s mid-budget action movies. They’re so good - just good actors, solid scripts, real stakes, and actual politics baked into the story. They knew how to entertain you while also saying something.

If this was made today, it would be an eight-part Orange Is the New Black-style Netflix miniseries that would take forever to get to the point and would completely defang the politics. And I hate that. We lost something when we killed the mid-budget theatrical action movie.

Set It Off proves that genre filmmaking can be radical. We need more of this.

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