★★
The wives of New York gangsters in Hell's Kitchen in the 1970s continue to operate their husbands' rackets after they're locked up in prison.
Classification: 15
The potential of a compelling crime drama exploring a women's place in their world is let down by an overly long runtime of badly paced storylines and poor editing. Andrea Berloff starts The Kitchen strong because of the 70's atmosphere and compelling performances from McCarthy and Haddish but it soon begins to unravel. The script takes on far too many subplots and remains unclear on what the important conflicts on the film are, with at least four or five antagonists for the wives and then, of course, inevitable betrayals. It may be an effort from Berloff as director and screenwriter to faithfully adapt the comic book miniseries but it makes the entire film convoluted especially in the third act when several "payoffs" and storylines are just undercut with non-stop developments and an even more abrupt ending. The film is just overstuffed with these story beats, each character has at least three subplots along with their main storylines and it is hard to keep track of everything.
The intention appears to be to deliver an epic crime drama exploring corruption in America, feminism, violence, motherhood, and loyalty. Unfortunately, it all falls apart during the film as the script is unable to balance all of the ideas and themes into a cohesive story but Berloff and editor Christopher Tellefsen can't seem to salvage much in the edit bay. There are strong moments in The Kitchen, the wives rise to power feels natural if not a little rushed and there lies the main issue with the film, the pacing and time management. While most scenes work on their own because of the performance and production design, its how they are all put together which fails the overall product. One moment is deep and pensive, the next is a sudden plot twist that just has no real effect on the narrative, and then that development is ignored for another development and then a scene comes in which undercuts that development. Editing is a process of trimming the fat from a film, with The Kitchen forgoes that process in the hope that covering every conceivable plotline will make the film more relevant and epic but instead dooms it to forgettable mediocrity.
The story becomes so tiresome and narratively absurd but it's still nice to look at. The cinematography from Maryse Alberti doesn't reinvent the wheel but clearly wants to emulate the look and feel of classic 70s crime films, the final result, however, doesn't capture that gritty aesthetic. The production and costume design is great, visually capturing the wives transcendence into power with every new outfit and hairstyle allowing them to pop in usually clichéd scenes and locations. It's easy to tell that the passion and intent were there to deliver a pulpy interpretation of crime families in New York through this attention to detail but its the lack of clarity in the central themes that makes the final product feel empty. Performance-wise The Kitchen is a mix of clichéd characters with even stranger results, the three leads represent three archetypes of wives in cinema; a loving wife and mother, an abused spouse, and an unhappy partner. They all go through a transformation gaining confidence, arrogance, avarice with interesting if not sudden conclusions. At a certain point, The Kitchen appears to be leading to an endgame of the three wives turning against each other utilising their allies and skills to decide who will rule Hell's Kitchen but because of the crammed plotlines, the focus is split because of the lack of commitment to a main conflict.
Elisabeth Moss as the battered wife who begins to murder her criminal abusers and rivals alongside her new beau shows an interesting descent of a character but Moss's performance and how she is integrated into the other storylines don't mesh as well as it could. The most interesting character is Ruby portrayed by Tiffany Haddish, a ruthless African American woman who is the social pariah in the Irish crime family circle. The film dabbles in lots of themes such as racism, religion, the deep-seated divides that exist between individuals and communities, and Ruby is a character tired of being on the losing side. Steeled and ruthless in a world where a woman can't be any less to succeed, Berloff seems to want to tell a story of how Ruby's ambition leads to disaster for herself and her partners but can only deliver mixed results. The same with McCarthy's storyline as her character must decide between family and business but its the same lack of clarity and focus that just leaves any potential drama meandering while it waits for other subplots to catch up.
It may feel like repetition but it's this same fault that cripples The Kitchen at every moment where it could achieve greatness, the very act of viewing the film becomes laborious because of how everything falls apart. The payoffs to storylines that are set up don't have the desired effect or even get a proper conclusion, it's like the filmmakers just had a checklist of typical plot points that are featured in crime films and made sure they covered all their bases hoping familiarity would make up for their faults. Too much happens in The Kitchen, an overabundance of plot, shocks and consequences that it has the undesired effect of making the audience numb to what's happening to the characters, at a certain point you're just waiting for it to end and when it does you're shocked because it still feels that there was more story to cover. Ambitious with how it wanted to tell a story of women surviving in men's violent world, The Kitchen isn't entirely hopeless but the moments that do inspire hope for the film aren't enough to save it.
Director: #AndreaBerloff
Cast: #MelissaMcCarthy, #TiffanyHaddish, #ElisabethMoss, #DomhnallGleeson, #JamesBadgeDale, #BriandArcyJames, #MargoMartindale, #Common, #BillCamp
Release Date: September 20th 2019
Trailer:
Written review copyright ©CoreyBullochReviews
Images and Synopsis from the Internet Movie Database
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