Leaving her husband a meal in the microwave, Thelma (Davis) sets off with her friend Louise (Sarandon) for a weekend holiday. But at their first stop, Thelma is nearly raped outside a bar; Louise shoots and kills the man. Gone is the carefree mood, and their destination is now Mexico. Along the way, the pistol-packing fugitives become ever bolder, robbing a convenience store, shooting up a leering driver's truck, and locking a cop in his car boot. Directing with blistering energy, Scott delivers the goods, while Sarandon and Davis, together with sympathetic cop Keitel, are acutely convincing throughout the deepening chaos.
Callie Khouri's script is nevertheless simplistic in the way it reduces many of the men to stereotypes, while the women gain strength less through self-knowledge than through the American gun laws. Ultimately, this road movie calls on too many knee-jerk reactions: its shocking and funny scenes rely squarely on role reversals within a traditionally male genre.