Director F. Gary Gary treats the the plight of a quartet of blue-collar African-American women with great sympathy in "Set It Off." Each of these women have experienced adversity first hand and the idea is that they have been dealt a bad hand by destiny. One woman prostitutes herself to ensure that her brother gets to go to college, but she finds out later that her efforts were for naught. Another woman is implicated in a bank robbery simply because she knew the man who robbed her bank and didn't follow the procedures that she had been drilled in. Another woman is a single parent who has to work one job to pay the babysitter. Finally, the fourth member who is the least sympathetic is a lesbian who has been restoring her car since the seventh grade. These closely-knit friends take their lumps but decide that whatever a man can do, they can do better. Consequently, they embark on a life of crime in this predictable, often contrived, but nevertheless entertaining crime thriller. Clearly, the moral of the story is don't rob banks. If you know somebody robbing a bank, you must behave as if you don't know them. Never, never, never--if you are a single-parent--ever bring your unattended infant to the workplace. Crime doesn't pay and "Set It Off" makes it abundantly clearly as three out of the four survive. The fourth escapes because somebody on the other side allows them to getaway. The performances are sometimes a little too over the top, especially Jada Pinkett and Vivica A. Fox. If you abhor profanity, prepare yourself for an onslaught of the F-bomb.
Review of Set It Off
