Foxy Brown

Originally planned as a sequel to Coffy, and like most sequels a less successful imitation of the original. The previous film's insinuations towards the rape-revenge genre are here made literal in a pretty gruesome way, although that episode is apparently less traumatic than the murder of a lover. At least in this film it's the man who gets fridged in order to provide the motivation for a female protagonist to seek vengeance, rather than the other way around. And although Foxy Brown is leered at, groped, harassed, slapped, punched and raped – the exploitative portrayal of which is a lot more problematic than in Coffy – she still gets to wreak her ruin upon the criminal underworld in a way that has inspired black and female audiences since. 

The film is fastidious on the distinction between justice and revenge, but ultimately allows that in the context of a corrupt judiciary sometimes you have to allow the two to (literally) bleed together. The best scene is when Foxy Brown teams up with a hooker to seduce a judge on the take, and proceeds to utterly humiliate him and destroy his career. It's very funny, and is one of the few times that Foxy relies on exposing the hypocrisy of the elite rather than just wantonly killing people. The former is just as satisfying as the latter.