The Review: Set it Off

Set It Off 4/10

For months my cousin Jasmine has been asking me to watch the 1996 comedy Set It Off. This is about four women that decide to rob banks. They all have their own reasons. Jada Pinkett plays Lida “Stoney” Newsome. She is trying to raise money for her brother to go to college so you can guess what's gonna happen to him. Queen Latifah is Cleopatra “Cleo” Sims who plays a female Ice Cube. Vivica Fox plays Francesca “Frankie” Sutton. And Kimberly Elise plays Tisean “T.T” Williams. What is with these damned names?

This starts off with a rapper robbing a bank that Frankie works at. She is stuttering and stammering so they blow some old lady's head off in front of her and a shoot out happens with more people getting killed. One robber makes it out somehow. Frankie ends up getting fired. The other three work for a shitty cleaning service and hate how much they make. Cleo wants to do thug shit and buy thug things. T.T wants to support her son. Stoney wants to support her brother and will even sleep with greasy old Black men to get the money. Terrible sex scene. My penis fainted. One night T.T's brother decides he don't wanna go to school, heads to that guy that got away from the bank robbery's place, gets the same haircut as him, and ends up dead. Lesson: stay out of school.

One day at work, Frankie is now part of the cleaning crew, T.T brings her son who sees a bottle of cleaner and goes “Ooh, kid drinks!” and gets poisoned. Mind you, this is like the next day or something after dude gets killed. Mother of the year, this one. Her son gets taken away and she has to somehow pay to get him back. They get some guns from Dr. Dre and start robbing banks. T.T chickens out and straight up runs out the bank and still wants a cut of the money. Bullshit! Bullshit, I says! You get nuffin'! They still split it with her and start robbing banks wearing wigs that look like they've been stored in soup cans. Cleo keeps buying expensive shit and get her girlfriend lingerie. T.T just stands there acting like a five year old and being scared of everything. Stoney meets Blair Underwood and they end up having Demolition Man sex.

Later the cleaning job boss steals their money that they decided to hide at work because plot. T.T shoots his dumb ass in the back and they leave. He spent almost all the money in a day. This entire time a detective is on their asses and now has enough evidence because Cleo likes to have her grubby greasy fingerprints on CD's she tosses out of windows when she steals cars. They decide that they need to rob one more bank and book it which means somebody is gonna die. And its T.T! This security guard pops her ass twice before Cleo starts spraying with her uzi. I don't think she hits anyone. T.T dies and the cops start chasing them all down. Cleo gets shot in a death scene that made me laugh. They had to have shot her ass 1,200 times. Frankie and Stoney get away until they split up. Frankie is shot trying to run and Stoney watches from a Greyhound bus which made me say “No cop would shoot that many shots with a bus right fucking there full of people!” But he did. Stoney is the only one left and heads to Mexico and gets a haircut. She makes a call to Blair Underwood thanking him for letting her get away with murder.

This movie was funny mostly because I have seen so many movies like this when I was in junior high and high school. As soon as dude said he was going to college I said “Rickyyyyyy!” knowing his ass was gonna get killed. Latifah was a cartoon version of a thug. T.T should have died during the first bank robbery. That would have helped this movie. There was no actual chemistry between these women. When Latifah told Pinkett that they had been friends since 1st grade I was like “Uh-what?!” They all seemed like they just met but just happened to know shit about each other. It was like a group of people that hated each other but had to be around each other Reservoir Dog style. I didn't hate this movie but it would've worked better as a comedy.

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