“Thelma and Lousie” gets a pretty bad rap. I will tell you right now: it is not a fun road trip movie. It is not a girly slumber-party movie. It has guns and blood and rape attempts and cars going over cliffs. It’s not a chick flick. It kicks ass.

Everything starts out innocently enough. Thelma (Geena Davis) and her best friend Louise (Susan Sarandon) are ready to leave their dead-end jobs and relationships and take a drive. They pack small suitcases and plan to gamble and drink and have fun together. They take a Polaroid picture of each other in Thelma’s driveway, smiling in the sun and wearing new sunglasses.

Things get exciting pretty quickly. The first bar they stop in, Thelma is assaulted by a cowboy in the parking lot and is almost raped except that Louise shoots the cowboy. Now it’s real. There’s a dead body outside the bar, and the ladies hit the road in their ’66 Thunderbird. And now they know how to shoot.

I like this movie for a lot of reasons, not all of which center around two powerful women characters who are doin’ it for themselves. I like it because it’s gritty without being gratuitous. It’s directed by a man (Ridely Scott, who also did “Gladiator”) who is not afraid to show other men acting like pigs and getting their just desserts. I also, let’s be real, like it because it briefly features a young Brad Pitt’s naked bod. A slip into gratuitousness I can allow, just this once.

If you already know how “Thelma and Louise” famously ends, then watch it for the build-up. If you don’t, watch it for the last 10 minutes and wonder if you would do the same thing under the same circumstances.