Film

Thelma & Louise

A quiet weekend fishing trip spirals into a cross-country flight from the law, turning two ordinary women into outlaws almost by accident. Ridley Scott's road movie is equal parts thriller, buddy comedy and slow-burn feminist reckoning, its desert landscapes as wide-open as its moral questions. Tense, funny, and finally shattering — essential viewing for anyone who thinks they already know how it ends.

TMDb rating7.6

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Fried Green Tomatoes1991

Another duo bound by fierce loyalty, told through flashback and Southern grit; it trades car chases for kitchen tables but hits the same note of women choosing each other over everything else.

But It's slower and more sentimental, with none of the outlaw adrenaline — this is a weepie, not a thriller.

Fried Green Tomatoes poster

Bonnie and Clyde1967

The blueprint for the doomed-lovers-on-the-run movie, shot with a jazzy, violent energy that scandalised audiences in its day and still crackles now.

But It's a heterosexual crime romance, not a friendship story, and its violence is far bloodier and more fatalistic.

Bonnie and Clyde poster

Mad Max: Fury Road2015

Swap the sedan for a war rig and you get the same fugitive-women-reclaiming-agency structure, turned up to eleven with practical stunts and Charlize Theron at her most ferocious.

But It's a full-throttle action spectacle in a post-apocalyptic wasteland — the tone and genre are miles from Thelma & Louise's grounded drama.

Mad Max: Fury Road poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Gun Crazy1950

Both films hand a woman the gun and the wheel and ask what she does with newfound power; Gun Crazy got there four decades earlier, in a bleaker, more claustrophobic key.

Decades before Thelma and Louise picked up a gun, this noir gave its heroine the trigger finger and let her drive the crime spree — a startling, compact B-movie that treats a woman's hunger for power as thrilling and doomed.

But It's a tight, black-and-white 1950 B-picture — no colour, no scenery, and a fraction of the running time.

Gun Crazy poster
More like this (8)

Set It Off1996

Four women, one heist, one country that keeps failing them — this channels the same simmering rage into a tighter, urban crime thriller with real teeth.

But The stakes escalate faster and the tone is grittier and more explicitly political about race and class.

Set It Off poster

Boys on the Side1995no page yet

Three women, one road trip, and a friendship that deepens under pressure — funnier and softer than Thelma & Louise but built from the same bones.

But It leans more comedic and melodramatic, with illness and romance replacing crime as the engine.

Natural Born Killers1994

Another couple turned folk-heroes by the media while fleeing across America — Oliver Stone's satire pushes the same themes of fame and violence into deliberately grotesque overdrive.

But It's aggressively stylised, satirical, and much more nihilistic — this one wants to disturb you, not move you.

Natural Born Killers poster

Wild2014

No crime, no chase, just one woman walking eleven hundred miles to find herself — the same hunger for reinvention, stripped down to its rawest, most solitary form.

But There's no fugitive tension or humour here — it's meditative and internal rather than plot-driven.

Wild poster

Girls Trip2017

Four lifelong friends let loose on a weekend that spirals wonderfully out of control — pure, raucous joy if you want the friendship without the tragedy.

But It's a broad studio comedy, with none of the moral weight or danger — just good, filthy fun.

Girls Trip poster

Easy Rider1969

The countercultural granddaddy of the American road movie, where freedom on the highway curdles into something darker the further you go — same journey, different gender, same dead end waiting.

But It's slower, more meandering, and steeped in late-60s psychedelia that hasn't aged evenly.

Easy Rider poster

Persepolis2007

Underneath the different medium and continent, it asks the same question Thelma & Louise does: what does a woman do when the systems around her leave no legal room to be herself?

An animated memoir of growing up in revolutionary Iran, drawn in stark black-and-white, where rebellion against control is quieter but no less urgent — a reminder that the fight for self-determination takes many forms.

But It's introspective and political rather than propulsive, and the animation may feel like a world away from a car chase.

Persepolis poster

Death Proof2007no page yet

It takes the same revenge-against-predatory-men engine and drenches it in exploitation excess, showing how far the tone can swing while the core idea — women weaponising the car against male violence — stays exactly the same.

Tarantino's grindhouse throwback flips the script — a killer stalking women in cars, until the women turn the tables and become the hunters, in gloriously trashy, dialogue-heavy fashion.

But It's deliberately pulpy, gory, and slow to start — a grindhouse experiment, not a polished drama.

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Recommended by

Easy Rider, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Dead to Me, Waiting to Exhale, Bonnie and Clyde, Broad City, Badlands, Ms .45, Fried Green Tomatoes, Set It Off, Raw, Monster, The End of the F***ing World, The Nightmare, Powwow Highway, Girls Trip