The Kitchen

 

The Kitchen

 

Director – Andrea Berloff

Writers – Andrea Berloff - based on the comic book series created for DC Vertigo by Ollie Masters & Ming Doyle

Stars – Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish, Elisabeth Moss 

 

Andrea Barloff’s directorial debut is an adaption of a DC Vertigo comic set in the ‘70s telling how three abused and/or neglected mobsters wives take over the business in Hell’s Kitchen when their husbands are put away. So, the grounds are there for a look at misogyny, violence, gender relations, etc., and if there are any doubts about its feminist intent, there are endless shots of the ladies striding together to a groovy soundtrack. But there is something that doesn’t quite gel, doesn’t quite convince in motivation: with comics, there is plenty of room for the reader to fill in the lacunas, but Berloff doesn’t quite cohere across the time-jumps. There’s the sense of posturing rather than solidity, that it lacks in fully making sense.

 

Which leaves its three esteemed leads a little hit-or-miss, although Elizabeth Moss comes out least unscathed. Tiffany Haddish becomes increasingly one-note and Melissa McCarthy is left floundering. Of the men, Domhall Gleeson is the most intriguing (though his touted psychopathy is ultimately no more than anyone else). And we don’t quite get a montage of them sexying-up, but they definitely get less home wifey and dolled up the more criminal they become. There’s a fleeting gag about what they should wear to meet an opposing mob boss, but it’s another potential insight barely given air.

 

And there’s not a lot of consequence for all the killing that goes on: for all it spanning of years, it’s not so interested in long-term effects. The problem is we are meant to hold up these ladies as fighting against and besting the masculine world of gangsterdom, but there is little besting or bettering when, for all their womanly smarts and pouts of determination, they are just as ruthless and brutal as the men. Exploitation may get away with self-made Angel of Vengeance assassins, but this isn’t that.  They are not icons, even if the film posits that they are right down to the ham-fisted “outta my way” final moment.