Four black female friends are struggling in their own ways. Frankie has a good job at the bank but, when someone she knows robs the place she gets fired for being potentially involved. She gets a job with the others as a cleaning service but soon all their situations worsen leading them to plan a bank robbery themselves. The job goes great but soon they need another job and another - but the police are slowly closing in on them.
I'm missed seeing this several times and looked forward to it a bit. The plot is basically the same as several other crime flicks you'll have seen - gang begins robbery spree, how will it turn out? etc. However the twist here is that the gang are all women and all black. As a twist this is quite good as there are very few all black, all female thrillers out there, so they deserve at least one! The plot is pretty solid and allows for good robbery pieces as well as the usual standoffs and quite exciting climax.
It does also have many weaknesses. There are too many ghetto movie clichés thrown into the mix for my liking. Whether it be the boy bound for college who gets shot, the single mother trying to make it, the low riders etc. I understand why they're all there but really it hurts the film a bit. One little weakness that bothered me was Stony's romance with Keith - he seemed too good to be true and doesn't fit in with all the grit etc that's going on around the rest of the film. But that's it - aside from some sex scenes to help get men into the cinema and some lesbian stuff that appears to be the only reason to have made Cleo gay.
Pinkett (as she was then) is pretty good -in fact pretty and good! She's the only one whose character stays someone resembling reality. I like Fox in several things but she starts normal and quickly turns into a gun-toting criminal. Elsie is OK in her first role and is suitably soft and trapped, but Latifah overplays her butch lesbian. Underwood is as greasy as his hair and I didn't like him and McGinley does good despite his role basically being an attempt to make the white audience feel good about their role. Outside of that Dr Dre makes a laid back cameo.
Overall it doesn't rise above the level of the heist thriller generally but it's still enjoyable and is at least a different direction for all black female films - at least it's not yet another `waiting to exhale'!
