WHAT'S A CAR-THIEVING LITTLE GIRL TO DO?

Byline: David Kronke Television Critic

Another great stride in feminist history: Women have now made their own dopily misogynistic action flick. Oxygen's ``Banshee'' melds car chases, dismemberments and torture, all for its female clientele's edification.

Taryn Manning, who benefited from the indie hit ``Hustle and Flow's'' success playing pimp/rapper Djay's lone hooker (and backup singer), stars as, uh, Sage, a human specimen found nowhere in captivity: A soulful yet hard-bitten car thief -- one of the best in the business, a cop admires grudgingly.

Sage's worldview is world-weary: ``Guys see the world like an enormous barnyard,'' she tells a friend, adding, ``you're a hog, wallowing and snorting in your own revolting slop.'' Suddenly, Sage has become a TV critic, assessing her own film.

As the film opens, hot shot Sage makes a rookie mistake, leaving her driver's license at the scene of her latest boost (not the word pros like her use, she insists; it's ``zag'' -- don't care; ``boost'' sounds better).

She leads the cop on a coyly merry chase -- child's play for our antihero. Just one problem: The car she's just stolen belongs to -- oops! -- another TV-movie stand-by, a serial killer who moonlights, conveniently enough, as a decadent rave DJ.

When she gets home to meet a guy who's not quite her boyfriend -- he's scuzzy, but probably not quite scuzzy enough -- she finds his ear in an ashtray (so that's why the director took all those plot-device shots of his ostentatious earring) and a note on a bloody napkin demanding the car back.

Her boss at the chop shop is just another psycho in her life: Even though she's his biggest provider of illicit loot, he resorts to positively (or negatively) Draconian measures when she attempts to reclaim the car.

So anyway, she's too late: Plot-device ear-guy's body parts have been hidden like so many Easter eggs throughout her apartment and are discovered by the cop and his partner (who, ahem, becomes sweet on her) -- not a particularly swift team, it seems, as she handily escapes from them.

There's stupid, and then there's crazy stupid, and then there's this movie, but it does move with a brisk, idiotic efficiency.

< But the question remains: To whom does Oxygen think this film will appeal? The film fairly revels in its sadistic treatment of women -- it's more empowering if it's written, directed and produced by women, I suppose -- but is it something women would want to watch, even if a woman does manage to save the day?

``You know why people hate the world, Sage?'' a character asks our heroine. ``Because they want to.'' Or maybe because they've seen one too many of this type of movie.

David Kronke, [phone]

david.kronke(at)dailynews.com

BANSHEE - Two stars

What: ``Hustle and Flow's'' Taryn Manning stars as a car thief pursued by both the cops and a serial killer.

Where: Oxygen.

When: 8 tonight.

In a nutshell: Stupid and mean, if briskly executed. (And ``executed'' is the right word.)