I happened to see the end of this movie on TV the other week. I’d never heard of it before, but I like Westerns, so I decided to watch the whole thing.

Maria Álvarez (Penélope Cruz) and Sara Sandoval (Salma Hayek) team up to get revenge on Tyler Jackson (Dwight Yoakam), a sinister land baron who is taking control of huge swaths of Mexican land. In the course of the land grab, he murders Sandoval’s father, and nearly Alvarez’s as well.

Initially, the two women fight with one another about various petty disputes. (Maria is an unsophisticated farm girl, Sara is wealthy and educated.) But both want to avenge their fathers and help their countrymen, so they begin robbing banks to give back to the people, after training for time with a “retired” bank robber. (Sam Shepard.)

The fame of “las bandidas” grows, and eventually they team up with a detective named Quentin Cooke (Steve Zahn), after they convince him of Jackson’s immoral methods. The trio pulls off increasingly daring and complicated heists, until finally Jackson tries to flee the country by rail with all the gold from the bank of Mexico.

It seems hardly necessary to say it, but of course, the bandidas foil him, having learned to work together as partners, and respect one another as friends. They are a little disappointed when Quentin returns to the U.S. with his fiancee, but they still happily ride off into the sunset together.

It’s a fast-paced and funny film, with over-the-top action sequences and complicated bank robberies that don’t make much sense (e.g. where did Sara find the ice skates she uses in one heist?) but it doesn’t matter, because they are fun to watch, and Cruz, Hayek, and Zahn are all likable heroes.

A few times, the bickering between the two women does get a little tiresome–but the film moves so fast it’s hard to complain about it too much. The other thing that annoyed me was a scene where, to demonstrate his quick-draw prowess, the former bank robber shoots the hat off Maria’s head. I hate it when movies make it seem like guns are toys for doing magic tricks. Granted, this is an over-the-top action comedy, so it’s in keeping with the overall tone, but it still grated on me.

It was interesting to watch this so soon after writing this post about female characters. On the one hand, this film doesn’t shy away from cheesecake-y shots of the stars. If you want examples of “male gaze” in cinema, there are plenty in Bandidas. At one point, Maria and Sara dress up as burlesque dancers and pose sexily with Quentin. During their bank robber training, they do push-ups in a river while wearing low-cut blouses for… some reason.

But despite this, it never felt like they were being objectified. Sara and Maria aren’t driven purely by a desire to please men, and their friendship isn’t destroyed by their attraction to Quentin. They are fully-realized characters in their own right. The movie easily passes the Bechdel test–not only do they have conversations that are not about men, they even have one that’s about the rudimentary principles of gold-backed currency! (I propose a “Gambrel test”: do characters in a film have at least one conversation about economic theory?)

In short, the film seemed sexy without being sexist. At least, that’s how it struck me. It’s a lighthearted, somewhat cheesy Western comedy that never takes itself too seriously. It’s not a deep, thought-provoking film that you’ll think about for hours afterward. But it is a lot of fun while you’re watching it.