The first thing you need to know about Honey O’Donahue is that she is a fabulous movie detective. Now you might be saying to yourself right now, “That just means she’s a great detective, right? A master solver of mysteries?” And sure. Maybe. Honestly, it’s a bit open to debate after watching Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke’s new slinky potboiler, Honey, Don’t! But more important than the crime-stopping is how she pieces together the mystery of what it means to be a proper movie detective. She knows, for instance, that when a jealous spouse offers you money to confirm his husband is having an affair, you should kindly but firmly recommend he spend it instead on a romantic dinner that ends in candid conversation. She also recognizes the necessity of being not only smarter than the local dick on the police force, but able to remind him of this fact with snappy put-downs. She is a detective you simply enjoy watching drink, smoke, and carouse her way through the wreckage of a case, one dead body—or for that matter, a live one in her bed—at a time. And as played by Margaret Qualley with an authentic Carolina lilt, she ascends in Honey Don’t!’s best moments into becoming a kind of Southern-fried, queer Marlowe; a detective whose investigations are nearly impenetrable to follow, but like Bogie or Mitchum before her, you’re just happy to vibe in the patter of her day-to-day rigamarole. She is, in other words, a great creation for Qualley and the not-so-secret weapon in a character piece that sizzles despite the film’s deliberately (and perhaps too) shaggy plot. That plot, of course, involves dead bodies and criminal conspiracies-within-conspiracies on the outskirts of sunny Bakersfield, California. It’s there that local private eye Honey O’Donahue begins looking into the apparent death by car accident of a lonely woman in the community. She keeps her reasons to herself when the police gumshoe (Charlie Day) asks what her interest in the case is, just as she keeps him at further distance when he presses if she wants to discuss the case over drinks. “Book club,” she answers curtly. But didn’t she just tell him she had a book club meeting two days ago? “Dostoevsky, we’re really struggling with it.” The truth of course is Honey has eyes more for the likes of M.G. (Aubrey Plaza), the no-nonsense cop in charge of the station’s evidence locker, than she does for members of the male persuasion. But it’s fair to wonder if her real passion is for verbally sparring with almost anyone who crosses her path. That includes the local fuzz, as well as her sister and a wayward teenage niece, who both have a habit of not wanting Honey’s advice while implicitly yearning for her approval; it likewise pertains to the paranoid client (Billy Eichner) who wants to disgrace his husband at any cost; and you can sure as hell bet she saves her most scathing witticisms for the likes of a pastor at a local church who calls himself Reverend Drew (Chris Evans). Drew has big used car salesman energy, and the more Honey breathes it in, the more his congregation looks like a cult. All parties wind up involved in ways great or small in a scheme that proves more intricate than one might guess. But the key element that really gives momentum to the whole web is the perpetually bemused smile on Qualley’s face, which can simultaneously appear both empathetic and contemptuous in an unblinking glance. It’s a part clearly written toward Qualley’s talents by Coen and Cooke, who after working previously as director and editor on films like The Big Lebowski and O Brother, Where Art Thou? have combined forces as writers and film editors. And like last year’s Drive Away Dolls, the pair imagine Honey Don’t! to be part of a “lesbian B-movie trilogy,” a film which leans lightly into the exploitation of grindhouse cinema while also offering a frothier narrative for LGBTQ cinema than, say, the tragedies that Oscar voters so love. Honey Don’t! is intentionally slight and sleight of hand while setting up the type of boneheaded criminal conspirators who populated so many Coen movies of yore, back when Ethan was writing with Joel. I would also say that despite its happy desire to titillate and objectify, the film feels closer in line with the original film noir movement of the 1940s and ‘50s with its most base pleasures coming from dialogue and performance. Qualley is again the charismatic sun around which everything else orbits, but Plaza also gets plenty of room to build a character miles apart from her frequent Parks and Rec type. To be sure, M.G. has a deadpan about her too, but it’s more bitter, deadly variety—the kind of hard edge that can only come from being sharpened by a lifetime spent as the other in a small, Christian town. Meanwhile Evans is having fun as another creep, although six years on from hanging up Captain America’s shield, and then trying on the sleazebag sweater in Knives Out, it’s fair to wonder if he is now typecast in the other direction. Reverend Drew is a bit more one-note than Knives Out’s Ransom, but it works for the arch and typically dimwitted criminal comedy that Ethan and Joel began their directing career fixated on. Drew is at the focal point of an underworld rife in sex, drugs, and murder, but the mechanics of it—and how it intersects with Honey’s other investigations—is obscure. If one sits down and thinks about it, there seems to really be a greater narrative plotted out by Cooke and Coen left teasingly off-screen, and which would make it all snap into place. But as they appear determined to draw on films famous for their “plot doesn’t matter” legacies, the writers elect to keep Honey and audiences somewhat in the dark all the way to the end credits. The choice benefits from what a gem of a role the title character is for Qualley, funneling all of the film’s attention toward Honey O’Donahue’s swaggering hips and gait. However, it also makes the film slightly frothier and fleeting than it probably needed to be. The writers and star have built such a great character, you want to see her utilized for more than the B-movie aspirations set before her. Yet while working within the purposeful confines of this box, the creatives have succeeded in crafting a merry little murder yarn full of style and devastating zingers. This might be the second part of a thematic trilogy, but one leaves also hoping it’s the first part in a series of cases, and next time Qualley and Honey get to sink their teeth into a larger Coen crime syndicate. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! Honey Don’t! premieres at the Cannes Film Festival on May 24 and in theaters on Aug. 22.