Also caught up with The Kitchen… a gangster movie starring Melissa McCarthey, Tiffany Hadish, and Elizabeth Moss. And it’s not a comedy (what with McCarthey and Haddish usually doing comedies). This is a serious, dramatic gangster flick set in the late ’70s. Also based on a DC Comics book but it’s no superhero flick.
So the husbands of the three ladies are pinched and sent to the big house for four years. They were all part of the Irish mob in Hell’s Kitchen so the other gangster promise to take care of the wives financially until their men get out. They are very bad at this so the ladies decide to take on – and take over – some of the crime themselves. Before you can say, “as far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster”, the ladies are running the protection racket and are looking to expand out of The Kitchen. The established gangster have other plans…
The movie spends a lot of time assuring us that the ladies are bad-ass gangsters (who actually deliver the protection services they promise). But the movie spends so much time telling us that and not enough time showing us that. Over and over again we’re told these ladies are large and in charge. We sometimes see the result of their crime wave… they have people murdered like the best male gangsters so that’s a plus. Right? Your tolerance for the sometimes quite brutal violence depends on how much you like gangsters in movies (my tolerance is low).
There’s a lot of things this movie does that doesn’t work. It’s tedious, repetitive, not a lot “happens”, and some of the actors are overdoing the gangster thing big-time. I really really really did not like this film. Which is a little weird since the talent on screen is really good and the movie is dark and atmospheric as befitting a crime drama. I think the problem is that the story, writing, and dialog just don’t work… and some of the editing is rough. The movie looks good, but it isn’t put together well.
Skip this one. It’s on the right track as far as showing ladies being bad-ass and in-charge… but they stuck all that into a dud of a movie.
Score: 58