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THE KITCHEN (2019)
Director: Andrea Berloff Cast: Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish, Elisabeth Moss, Domhnall Gleeson, James Badge Dale, Brian d'Arcy James, Margo Martindale, Bill Camp, Jeremy Bobb, Common, E.J. Bonilla, Wayne Duvall, Myk Watford, Annabella Sciorra MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:42 Release Date: 8/9/19 |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 8, 2019 It is, of course, unfair to deride an entire medium in sweeping and unspecific terms. With that caveat in mind, let's just say that it comes as no surprise to discover that The Kitchen is based on a comic book series. The movie really feels as if it's catering to the usual criticisms of the medium. Its characters are thinly developed. Its concerns are almost exclusively about the plot, which is also quite thin. The premise is kind of clever, but the story itself is rushed to the point that it's barely convincing. Not all comics are like this, of course, but the shoe fits here. It will be worn. The central conceit of writer/director Andrea Berloff, making her directorial debut while adapting the comic series by Ollie Masters and Ming Doyle, is rather neat. Here, a trio of women, the wives of mobsters in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, rise to take over an Irish crime organization during the late 1970s. There's a lot that could be done with this premise, considering the social, cultural, and organizational norms that the three women are confronting and toppling by becoming the bosses of a male-dominated enterprise. Some of that is here, but the story is mostly about the women's surprisingly quick rise to power, before putting assorted external threats and internal tensions in their way. As for the characters themselves, Berloff seems to be of the opinion that they shouldn't get in the way of a familiar and eventually tedious plot. The women are Kathy (Melissa McCarthy), Ruby (Tiffany Haddish), and Claire (Elisabeth Moss). They're introduced in short snippets of their respective home lives, with Kathy living a fairly ordinary life as a mother of two and the wife to Jimmy (Brian d'Arcy James), while Ruby and Claire are dealing with being married to controlling and abusive (in Claire's case, physically) men. Jimmy, Ruby's husband Kevin (James Badge Dale), and Claire's husband Rob (Jeremy Bobb) are arrested after robbing a local store and beating the two FBI agents who have been tracking them. With their husbands sentenced to two years in prison and local employers refusing to hire women, the wives have to rely the crime family to survive financially. Little Jackie (Myk Watford) is the public-facing boss, and Ruby's mother-in-law Helen (Margo Martindale) vaguely runs affairs behind the scenes. Neither is keen on giving the three women too much help, so Kathy, Ruby, and Claire decide to help themselves—to parts of the crime syndicate's business that have been neglected. Almost immediately, their new enterprise, offering protection to local businesses with the help of only two enforcers, rivals Jackie's. As soon as the boss is out of the picture, thanks to the convenient appearance (He has been in hiding for a couple of years and arrives at the exactly right place at exactly the right time to rescue Claire) of psychopathic murderer Gabriel (Domhnall Gleeson), the women take control of the whole organization—with only minimal complaints, questions, or challenges. Each of the women has something of an evolution, although that's a generous description, since the plot requires them to snap into their new roles to keep things moving. Kathy goes from housewife to expert entrepreneur (Her kids basically disappear from the story, except for two scenes—one in which she explains that wants power and another in which they might be in peril). Ruby does the same, only she becomes more ruthless in process. On a side note, Berloff never directly confronts the racism of the people surrounding Ruby, raising only the existence of the subject through some vague language from Helen (who, for her part, is nothing more than a disposable and swiftly forgotten obstacle for the characters). Meanwhile, Claire, who decides that she'll never let anyone turn her into a victim again, teams up with Gabriel to learn the ins and outs of murder and getting away with it. One could make something of the fact that Claire, who has been abused her entire life, only sees freedom from abuse in such an extreme. Instead, the movie mostly plays her killings and the grisly disposal of the bodies as a twisted joke. All of this is simply a means to empower these characters as hastily and broadly as possible, without any genuine concern for the characters themselves or the assorted social and cultural challenges that they have to overcome. They exist, not as actual people, but as general symbols and, more specifically, as the vessels to keep the plot going. Whatever changes these women go through and whatever trials they have to face are far less important than, say, the basic politics of getting involved with an Italian mob boss (played by Bill Camp) from Brooklyn or waiting for those federal agents (played by Common and E.J. Bonilla) to return to the picture. The main problem with The Kitchen is that—despite its promising characters and its premise, loaded with thematic potential—the movie is only about what it's about. It's a superficial gangster movie that's far too content in being only that. Copyright © 2019 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for
violence, language throughout and some sexual content)
