ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, November 8, 1996 TAG: 9611080050
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: MOVIE REVIEW
SOURCE: KATHERINE REED STAFF WRITER
"Set It Off" lays the groundwork quickly for being a movie about why people - and particularly black women - might be "forced" to resort to crime for financial survival.
It gives us Frankie (Vivica Fox), who is working as a teller at a downtown LA bank when it's held up by a group of black men - one of whom she recognizes from the projects, where she lives. Instead of following "the procedure," she tries to talk the holdup man out of making this big, life mistake.
She is rewarded with a close-up of a customer's head being blown off, and is liberally splattered with blood in the process. Then, she is fired - for ignoring the procedure and, presumably, having some covert connection to the robbers themselves.
But Frankie isn't the only one having a bad week. Cleo (Queen Latifah), Stony (Jada Pinkett) and T.T. (Kimberly Elise) are being exploited by Luther, the man who runs the cleaning company that employs them. Stony's brother, Steve, isn't going to UCLA after all; T.T. never has enough money to pay a baby sitter, so she must bring her toddler to work with her - with disastrous results.
The set-up is far from smooth, but it effectively puts the audience in great sympathy for the four female robbers-in-the-making. But this movie isn't just about exploitation - it is exploitation - and it gives itself away again and again and again.
First, there is the problem of Cleo and her quasi-comical macho ways. Cleo is a lesbian of the most masculine variety with a beautiful girlfriend and a penchant for muscle cars. She hatches the notion of robbing banks, knows exactly where to get the firepower (from "Black Sam" - Doctor Dre) and seems to have been waiting all her life for this opportunity. In spite of the fact that her single motivation for robbing banks is to buy her girlfriend sexy underwear, this movie makes her our hero - complete with "Thelma and Louise" out-in-a-blaze-of-glory ending.
Then there is the problem of the guns, which receive almost as much loving camera attention as Pinkett's cheekbones. They glitter, they shine - and, sometimes, they're supposed to make us laugh, especially when they're in Cleo's hands.
Finally, there's the beauty factor. The women are punished in order of their physical attractiveness - always a bad sign for artistic honesty.
The movie does have its moments of truth, however - and most of them belong to Stony, especially in her relationship with the downtown Harvard-educated banker (Blair Underwood). She certainly is smart enough to see him as a safe turn off the current dangerous course of her life, but she walks away anyway - unwilling to trade one form of captivity for another.
Ultimately, though, through an exceptionally improbable plot twist, crime does pay in this story - and awards the winner a brand-new Jeep and a gorgeous view of the Mexican coastline.
What director F. Gary Gray ("Friday") and the film's writers seem to be saying here is that crime is a crapshoot: If you're willing to take the chance and lose everything you care about, it might just pay off in purely financial terms.
It's a strange moral, but not a surprise in these times.
"Set It Off" **
Rated R for constant profanity and violence. A New Line Cinema release showing at Valley View Mall 6. 120 minutes.
LENGTH: Medium: 66 linesby CNB