The Kitchen *** (2019, Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish, Elisabeth Moss, Domhnall Gleeson) – Movie Review

Writer-director Andrea Berloff’s devious 2019 mob movie The Kitchen starts out like Widows, with the three wives of gangsters in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen in the late Seventies, forced by being broke to operate their husbands’ protection and thieving rackets after they are arrested during a crime and jailed for three years. But then it turns into a full-on Martin Scorsese movie, disguising the idea that it is based on a DC comic book series by Ollie Masters and Ming Doyle.

We are in for a tough GoodFellas kind of time, with a serious, nasty tone, but with a post-modern hint of black humour irony somewhere in the background. And, remarkably, Andrea Berloff pulls this difficult trick off.

Admittedly, The Kitchen does have a credibility problem. Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish, and Elisabeth Moss seem very, very tough broads, and you wouldn’t want to mess with them, so it is possible they could actually pull off these stunts. But does McCarthy look right with a gun in her hand? Maybe not. Could these women smoothly trick and best all the smart tough guys of New York? Maybe not. But, hey, you can go with the flow. It is great that it actually has a plot, and a strong one, and that it can pull off a couple of twists at the end. Even if they are hard to believe, they are at least very entertaining, and actually quite satisfying.

Though there is plenty of chat and plotting, Andrea Berloff ensures that there is enough action and suspense and good old fashioned mob storytelling, But, better still, there are fantastic visuals, with striking sets and cinematography, and a tremendous Seventies soundtrack that alone make the movie worthwhile.

With the violence and language level very high throughout, it must have given the censors a headache. It looks and feels very much like an 18, so it’s a surprise it squeezed through with a 15. The body count is as high as the four-letter word count. On the other hand, the film wants to be about something, about friends and family perhaps, trying for some new angle, fresh lowdown here. It’s a shame that the equal rights, gender equality and black power themes don’t arise naturally from the story, and seem imposed on it to give it ‘meaning’. OK, we get it, it’s a girl power movie in a man’s world, now get on with the story. But, luckily, it does.

Andrea Berloff has written parts for her actresses, but terrible parts for her actors, all playing the weakest or most despicable, or most flawed characters. There is one exception to this: Bill Camp’s Italian mobster Alfonso Coretti, whom the girls do a deal with. This is a well-written, Oscar nominee role. To a lesser extent, Domhnall Gleeson is good company as Moss’s character’s strangely love-struck boyfriend.

But of course the film belongs to Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish, and Elisabeth Moss. Those who like them and their full-on, take-no-prisoners personas will perhaps like the film, though it has to be said that mob movies are mostly boys’ movies, so the film might struggle to find a wide audience. It also has to be said that the characters played by the three stars are not actually admirable example of womanhood, or does the film think they are?

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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