Honey Don't

Ethan Coen's latest solo effort is another half-baked noir

After taking Hollywood by storm for decades as a filmmaking duo, the Coen brothers have been striking out solo in recent years. Joel directed his Shakespearean adaptation The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021), while Ethan has leaned into noir. His first solo outing was the messy Drive-Away Dolls (2024), and his follow-up, Honey Don’t (2025), reteams him with Margaret Qualley from that film.

Honey Don’t is a throwback gumshoe detective story, riffing on classic noir tropes but set in a modern-day desert town in the U.S. Honey O’Donahue (Qualley) is a private detective whose no-nonsense attitude doesn’t keep her from becoming entangled with a shady church linked to a string of mysterious deaths. At its center is the promiscuous pastor Drew Devlin (Chris Evans), while Honey also finds herself aided—and distracted—by cop-turned-lover MG Falcone (Aubrey Plaza).

That summary makes the story sound more coherent than it is. Like Drive-Away Dolls, Honey Don’t often feels like it’s missing an entire reel of footage. The film zips along with disparate threads that never quite cross in a satisfying way. It’s more consistent than its predecessor, sticking to familiar noir beats instead of total narrative chaos, but it still plays like half a film—filled with shallow characters who might have worked with just a few more well-written scenes instead of leaning into cliché.

At just under 90 minutes, Honey Don’t is brisk, but you’re left wondering where exactly the story is going. There’s no real central mystery: Honey’s niece (Talia Shire) vanishes halfway through, which provides the only actual detective work, while the hinted criminal conspiracy behind Reverend Drew is barely developed. Characters are killed off seemingly at random, often when the filmmakers appear to lose interest in them, leaving behind loose ends and gaping plot holes.

The film ultimately feels like an exercise in style—an imitation of noir rather than a lived-in story. Ethan Coen never seems to decide what tale he wants to tell or what character he wants to explore, leaving us with genre sketches wrapped in a stylish but empty shell.

That said, Coen still attracts top-tier talent, and it shows both technically and in the performances. The editing and cinematography snap with the precision you expect from a Coen production, and the cast is game. Qualley gets the most to work with, delivering stock gumshoe lines with conviction, though the writing gives her little else. Evans is entertainingly lewd and shifty, but both he and Plaza are woefully underused, feeling more like cameos than true supporting roles. Their presence is so slight it is what leads me to believe there has to be a missing hour of film; one can’t have cast these great actors in such thankless roles.

In the end, Honey Don’t is an improvement over Drive-Away Dolls but continues Ethan Coen’s inexplicable streak of half-baked filmmaking. There’s still zip and style, but without a compelling mystery, layered characters, or narrative drive, Honey Don’t becomes exactly what a noir should never be: a bore.

4.4/10