Margaret Qualley has that rare movie star aura, the kind that makes you wonder if she was born a few decades too late. In Honey Don’t!, she channels it with absolute command, gliding through the film in red heels and a red dress scattered with white flowers, curls framing her face, lips pursed like she’s got the world figured out. As Honey O’Donoghue, a private detective in Bakersfield with the smoky voice and steady stare of a femme fatale straight out of the 1950s, she’s instantly magnetic.

Honey isn’t just a genre exercise though

She’s a queer woman who drives a turquoise Chevrolet SS and bats away advances from a clueless cop (Charlie Day) with a firm “I like girls.” That line lands with the sharp sting of truth: she means it, but he refuses to hear it, a reminder of how the world often silences queer women. What’s striking is how the movie itself never does. Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke shoot Honey with reverence, like a heroine worthy of old Hollywood glamour, but they also give her the agency that femmes of that era rarely got. She’s not decoration; she’s in charge.

The movie’s aesthetic

Tarantino grit crossed with Jane Russell allure, sets the tone. Neon signs, dilapidated diners, and the flickering scuzz of small town Bakersfield bleed through the screen, even in the credits, where storefront signage doubles as title cards. It’s stylized noir with a playful, modern edge.

If Drive Away Dolls was loose and loopy

leaning into screwball chaos and outrageous prop gags (yes, the infamous suitcase full of giant dildos), Honey Don’t! plays it straighter. Honey is the opposite of Jamie, the talkative libertine Qualley embodied in Coen’s last outing. Here, Qualley reins it in, giving a performance that’s more controlled, more simmering, and arguably more powerful.

The plot pits Honey against the rot of Middle American morality: Bakersfield’s Four Way Temple, run by a smiling predator in clerical garb. Chris Evans, breaking clean from his Captain America polish, sinks his teeth into the role of Reverend Drew, a holy man who manipulates troubled young women into his orbit only to exploit them in S&M rituals. It’s a premise that feels both pulpy and disturbingly real, and Coen and Cooke play it without piety, cutting at hypocrisy with a sly grin.

Together, the two films now look like the beginnings of an accidental trilogy, one that celebrates queer women without sermonizing. These are riffs, not lectures. They’re knowingly irresponsible, cheeky even, and that’s what makes them feel fresh. Where Drive Away Dolls stumbled at the box office, Honey Don’t! proves there’s something here worth chasing, a new kind of Coen led cinema, stripped of cynicism but full of bite.

At the center of it all is Qualley

Her Honey O’Donoghue is sharp, sexy, and commanding, the kind of heroine who could have been objectified in another time, but here, gets the last word and the sharpest gaze. In an age where noir can feel like pastiche, Honey Don’t! makes it feel alive again.