Film Review: Queen Latifah Ignites "Set it Off"

The scene before the opening credits in F. Gary Gray's Set it Off lays out the themes for the rest of the movie: we witness a bank robbery, a number of graphic slayings, and a black woman getting screwed over by the system.

The scene before the opening credits in F. Gary Gray's Set it Off lays out the themes for the rest of the movie: we witness a bank robbery, a number of graphic slayings, and a black woman getting screwed over by the system. When Frankie (Vivica Fox) gets fired from her job at the bank that's been held up because she lives in the same housing project as the perpetrator-- and therefore, according to her boss, was probably in collusion with him-- she joins her friends Cleo (Queen Latifah), Stony (Jada Pinkett), and Tisean (Kimberly Elise) cleaning office buildings in downtown Los Angeles. Bonded by longtime friendship, the four women help each other deal with their misogynistic boss, their families, and their lives.

When Cleo tells the others that they should rob a bank to get enough money to leave L.A., they initially resist, calling her crazy. But the unfortunate events keep piling up: Stony's brother is shot to death by cops who mistake him for an armed robber, and the child welfare authorities declare Tisean an unfit mother and take away her young son. Realizing that low-wage jobs aren't going to take them away from the institutionalized racism and sexism of their lives in L.A., the women end up at a shooting range, honing their skills with semi-automatic weapons. They plan their first heist by making use of Frankie's inside knowledge of banks.

Meanwhile, Stony develops a relationship with Keith at a downtown bank that the women case. Despite obvious differences in class-- the living room of Keith's posh digs is as big as Stony's entire apartment-- Keith affirms that, to a real man, toughness and spontaneity are more important than wealth in an attractive woman. Still, their on-screen sex scheme occurs after Keith buys Stony an expensive outfit on their way to a corporate black-tie event. She tells him that he makes her feel special; he makes love to her. Earlier in the movie, when Stony has sex with someone to get money for her brother, she stares at the ceiling and waits for it to be over; here, though, she clearly seems to take pleasure in the act, bringing a class-based element to both her sexuality and the enjoyment thereof.

Although the women don't intend for anyone to get hurt during their holdups, one thing leads to another and Set it Off becomes a virtually nonstop string of shootings, crashes, and car chases. The movie provides no alternative to vigilanteism (except slow death by a cruel system), and the destruction the friends unleash ultimately does most of them in as well. In the end, though, what holds the movies together is the friendship between Cleo, Frankie, Stony, and Tisean; convincingly drawn and well-played, the women care about each other, so we care what happens to them.

Whether seducing her girlfriend or brandishing double guns John Woo-style, Latifah's Cleo doesn't take bullshit from anyone, and puts as much spirit into loving her friends as she does into robbing banks. Like the others, she protects her friends fiercely, as much from one another as from a system in which the only answer to violence seems to be more violence. The suffocating racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia of American society may serve as a backdrop for Set it Off, but the depth and passion of the characters are what bring any sense to a senseless landscape.