It’s been nearly a decade since Boots Riley detonated onto the scene with a debut that fused absurdism and razor-edged sociopolitical critique. Now he’s finally back with a follow-up that—yes—eases off the horse dicks, but doubles down on style, comedy, and a sharper, more focused takedown of the late-stage hyper-capitalism we’re all marinating in.
Riley frames that critique through a trio of “boosters”—high-end retail thieves who flip stolen luxury goods at a discount in underserved communities. It’s a sly inversion of aspirational culture: if the system locks you out, why not reroute the pipeline?
The film centers on Corvette (Keke Palmer), a slick operator running with her crew, the Velvet Gang. They’re pros at lifting designer threads, but Corvette’s got bigger ambitions—she wants to be the designer. So when fashion icon Demi Moore’s Christie Smith dismisses boosters as “low-class urban bitches,” the crew decides to hit her where it hurts: her entire store. They go undercover at the boutique to case the joint, only to have their grand heist hijacked by Jianhu (Poppy Liu), who clears the racks with a handheld teleporter in peak Riley what-the-fuckery.
Jianhu, it turns out, works in Smith’s factories overseas and is siphoning product back to China, stockpiling it as leverage for better wages and conditions. What follows is an unlikely alliance between her and the Velvet Gang, a globe-spanning spree of retail expropriation that spirals into something far bigger than a simple score.
And that’s just the surface. Riley’s packing this thing with dense, interlocking ideas, but it never feels like homework. At its core is a blunt truth: capitalism doesn’t just produce wealth—it requires poverty to function. On one end, you’ve got Christie Smith and her elite clientele; on the other, the workers who make the clothes and the clerks who sell them. The boosters exist in the margins, both outside and entangled in this loop—a byproduct of systemic exclusion. When access is denied, theft becomes redistribution. Not just of goods, but of identity—designer labels as a shortcut to belonging in a system designed to keep you out.
You could write an entire essay unpacking the film’s subtext, but Riley never forgets to make it fun. On a purely surface level—as a chaotic, candy-colored “hood comedy” about fashion thieves—it absolutely rips.
A lot of that comes down to the cast, who commit so fully to the bit that the film’s wildest swings—stop-motion monsters, Matchbox-scale car chases—land with surprising emotional weight. That’s the secret sauce here: nobody winks. The performances ground the absurdity, and because of that, we buy in completely. While Palmer anchors the film, this plays much more like an ensemble, with the gang’s internal dynamics carrying as much weight as any romance. It’s a welcome shift.
And then there’s Moore, going full maximalist—chewing scenery with the tensile strength of a Jolly Rancher. Her Christie Smith is part tech messiah, part fashion tyrant, a delusional capitalist oracle who feels like Steve Jobs if he’d pivoted from iPods to couture. It’s not subtle, and that’s very much the point.
Boosters is a maximalist text—pulling from everything from blaxploitation grit to Looney Tunes chaos—while smuggling in a genuinely radical critique. It’s dense without being didactic, outrageous without losing its edge. In a landscape dominated by corporatized, four-quadrant sludge, Riley delivers something that feels alive: a manifesto disguised as a comedy, a call to arms wrapped in spectacle.If there’s a thesis here, it’s this: fast fashion and hyper-capitalism aren’t just systems we participate in—they’re cages we’ve learned to decorate. Boosters kicks at the bars, hard, and dares you to notice they’re there.
