Set It Off is a
1996 action/
crime/
drama film directed by
F. Gary Gray, and stars
Jada Pinkett,
Queen Latifah,
Vivica A. Fox and
Kimberly Elise (in her theatrical debut), as four close friends in
Los Angeles, California who decide to plan and execute a
bank robbery. They decide to do so for different reasons, although all four want better for themselves and their families.
Theatrical tagline
Deal with this. The only breaks you get are the ones you take.
DVD tagline: It's about crime. It's about payback. It's about survival.
Plot summary
Four
African-American women from the projects plan to rob banks in order to escape poverty and their harsh situations. Francesca 'Frankie' Sutton (
Vivica A. Fox), is an intelligent yet self-righteous bank teller who loses her job after the bank where she worked gets robbed and several people are left dead, including two of the bank robbers. After being interrogated by Detective Strode (
John C. McGinley), she reveals that she's familiar with one of the robbers because they live in the same neighborhood. Feeling uneasy about the fact that Frankie knew one of the robbers, her boss fires her despite her protests. Disappointed and angry, Frankie reluctantly gets a job at a janitorial company where her three best friends Stony, Cleo, and Tisean work. She also finds out how much of a menace and a bully the manager Luther (
Thomas Jefferson Byrd) is.
Lita 'Stony' Newsom (
Jada Pinkett), is a young woman struggling to pay her bills and take care of her younger brother, Stevie, whom she planned to send to college. Stony and Stevie's parents were killed in a car accident 4 years earlier and she had to step up to the plate as the "mother" and the older sister. It is shown that Stevie was friends with Lorenz (
Samuel Monroe Jr.), the surviving bank robber, much to Stony's dismay. After visiting then leaving Lorenz's apartment, Stevie is confronted by cops, who falsely identify him as Lorenz. Ordered onto the ground, Stevie can't due to a champagne bottle, earlier given to him by Lorenz, in his coat. His reaching into his pocket is met by panicked cries of a gun being drawn, prompting him to be fatally gunned down by the police, despite his screams to stop. Detective Strode regretfully realized at the last minute that not only have they caught the wrong guy, but have shot a defenseless man and alerted the true suspect to their presence. Moments later, Lorenz is shot and killed by the police after an intense shoot-out. Stony is left to mourn her dead brother.
CleoPatra 'Miss Cleo' Sims (
Queen Latifah), is the toughest and meanest one of the group. She has a criminal record for stealing cars, smokes
marijuana, and uses constant
profanity. She resides in an abandoned
garage with her
lesbian lover, Ursula. After one of her best friends loses her job and the other one loses her brother, Cleo suggests that they all plan to rob a bank.
Tisean 'T.T.' Williams (
Kimberly Elise, in her debut role), is a timid, mild-mannered woman and a single mother to her toddler son, Jajuan (
Van Baum &
Vincent Baum). She was against her friends' idea to rob a bank until her son was taken away by a social worker after he swallowed some disinfenctant spray and suffered severe poisoning.
Using
wigs and sunglasses to disguise their faces, the four women rob two banks, collect a large amount of money and make plans to leave the state. They all hide the money inside an air vent in a small room at the janitorial. By then, Stony had fallen in love with a well-paid, handsome banker named Keith Weston (
Blair Underwood), and she considers staying in Los Angeles to be with him. One day, Cleo, Frankie and Tisean come to work to find out that Luther quit and was replaced by a new manager. Feeling suspicious, the three women check the vent and discover that the money is gone. A little while later, they manage to track him down at a hotel. They barge into his room while he's having sex with a
prostitute and Cleo demands to know where their money is. Despite Cleo's threats to shoot him, Luther continues to pretend as if he knows nothing about the money. As soon as Cleo turns her back, Luther aims a gun of his own at her, but Tisean shoots him dead. They all flee the scene. Later on that day, Cleo is arrested by Detective Strode under the suspicion that she killed Luther. She participates in a line-up where the prostitute that was present at the time of the shooting was asked to identify Luther's killer. However, she refuses to cooperate and Cleo is released from jail.
Meanwhile Stony, Frankie, and Tisean are at Cleo's garage having a heated argument about the incident. Tisean is overwhelmed with the guilt of killing Luther and getting Cleo arrested as a result of her impulsive actions. Frankie wants to rob the biggest bank in town, but an angry Stony wants no part of it. Moments later, Cleo arrives at the garage and says that the police are all over them, therefore, they need to rob another bank and leave the state immediately. Everyone but Stony agrees to rob the biggest bank in town which is also same bank that Keith works at. The main issue however, is that the bank has never been robbed successfully, due to the fact that it's not near a major expressway. Disgusted, Cleo questions Stony's loyalty to her friends, then Stony relunctantly agrees. After luring Keith out of the bank under pretenses of a false date, Stony, Cleo, and Tisean begins to rob it while Frankie waits in the get-away car. Before they could make it out the door, Detective Strode and his partner stops them and orders them to drop their weapons. Tisean and Stony relunctantly put their guns down, but Cleo refuses to. Suddenly, the bank security guard takes several shots at Tisean, fatally wounding her. Enraged, Cleo initiates a very violent shootout with the police officers onsite. After that, they get Tisean inside of the car and drive towards the hospital. Unfortunately, Tisean dies in Stony's arms on the way to the hospital. They sadly abandon Tisean's body in the car and drive away in Cleo's 1962
Chevy Impala.
Keith realizes that Stony lied to him, and he goes back to the bank- where he's informed of the robbery which has just taken place.
The three women find themselves speeding away from police cars and helicopters. After losing the police for a brief moment, Cleo pulls into a tunnel and tells Stony and Frankie to run away while the police chase her in the opposite direction. They sadly agree and get out of the car. Once they are clearly out of sight of the police, Stony and Frankie tearfully embrace and split up. Frankie runs down the street, while Stony heads towards a bus station. Meanwhile, the cops finally catch up to Cleo and she suddenly finds herself surrounded. Realizing that she's out of options, but still not wanting to go down without a fight, Cleo lights a cigarette and cries to herself behind the wheel as she smokes it, then steps out of her car and begins shooting at the police with her
uzi; whereas she is quickly and brutally gunned down. After Cleo's death, the police find Frankie and order her to surrender. Detective Strode softly tells her that they want to save her since she's the only one that's alive. He politely asks Frankie to lay on the ground so they can arrest her, but she puts a gun to his head and then defies him by trying to run away. She is quickly shot in the back and killed by another officer. Stony painfully witnesses the whole thing through the bus window. Detective Strode notices Stony on the bus, but he decides not to alert the other officers after all she's been through.
Mourning the death of her friends and brother, Stony escapes to Mexico. After it's revealed that she has the stolen money in her possession, she takes her braid extensions out, and after making a long distance call to Keith to let him know that she's all right, the movie ends with her driving through the mountains to start a new life.
Cast
- Samantha MacLachlan — Ursula
- Samuel Monroe, Jr. - Lorenz
Trivia
- Thomas Jefferson Byrd appeared in a 1997 episode of Queen's Latifah's sitcom Living Single.
Soundtrack
A soundtrack containing hip hop and R&B music was released on September 24, 1996 by
Eastwest Records. It peaked at #4 on the
Billboard 200 and #3 on the
Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums and was certified platinum on November 12, 1996.
Awards and nominations
1997 Acapulco Black Film Festival- Best Director — F. Gary Gray (won)
- Best Actress — Queen Latifah (won)
1997 Independent Spirit Awards- Best Supporting Female — Queen Latifah (nominated)
1997 NAACP Image Awards- Outstanding Lead Actress in a Motion Picture — Queen Latifah and Jada Pinkett Smitth (nominated)
- Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture — Blair Underwood (nominated)
