‘Bad Girls’ re-imagines the Western by placing four female protagonists front and center, a notable shift for the genre. While their characters aren’t entirely defined by identity politics, the narrative goes out of its way to showcase female empowerment in a way that sometimes feels tacked-on rather than organic. It doesn’t aggressively sideline merit or skill, but there’s a whiff of box-ticking in the setup.

The film downplays traditional masculinity and Western gender roles, instead elevating its female leads into archetypes more commonly reserved for male characters. There’s a subtle undercurrent of mocking older traditions, but the film never gets overtly hostile, just revisionist. Some might see this as flattening the complexity of the classic Western dynamic.

While ‘Bad Girls’ doesn’t openly villainize traditional values, it doesn’t offer much in the way of alternative viewpoints, either. The film is dedicated to its female-empowerment theme, rarely letting other philosophies have their moment. The lack of pluralism is more a result of narrow focus than pointed ideology.