Approaching this movie with some trepidation since it was both a critical and commercial flop, I ended up being pleasantly surprised, as The Kitchen turned out to be a pretty entertaining watch. The storyline concerning three wives of Irish mobsters, who take over organized crime operations in New York's Hell's Kitchen in the late 1970s, after the FBI arrests their husbands, is I admit pretty far-fetched (perhaps a legacy of being surprisingly adapted from a DC comic). But if you can see over that and remember that New York during the 70's was generally recognised as being a crime capital, I found the story more than acceptable.
Many are comparing this to the recent cinema treatment of Widows, which though a well-made film, I found to be disappointingly, one of the more over-rated general releases of recent times. Granted there are similarities, but I found the stories to be quite different and crucially The Kitchen doesn't leave sub-stories untold, by the film's conclusion, as Widows is guilty of doing.
The three female leads are all excellent. One point worth mentioning is that unexpectedly perhaps, considering Melissa McCarthy features, Elisabeth Moss's, Claire, an initially timid and abused victim of a wife, arguably gets the majority of very darkly comic dialogue and scenes, as she transforms into a more than capable hit woman, under the tutelage of Domhnall Gleeson's (also very good), Gabriel O'Malley, an experienced professional assassin. More than anything The Kitchen is successful at depicting the physical, mental, social and relationship changes the three women undergo, whilst inserting themselves, not without significant challenges, into the hierarchy of the Hell's Kitchen underworld. It's not spoiling to suggest the women we see in the final frames, aren't the close friends, who we see, in the first act.
I've seen it quite frequently claimed that The Kitchen has a convoluted plot. I found it quite easy and logical to follow, but one has to keep paying attention. There are a couple of brief scenes during the second act that set up a couple of late and dramatic twists, which end up making perfect sense if you've been following closely and also better explain one character's behavioural changes. It is fair to say, that this not overlong movie of around 100 minutes, is not burdened with any unnecessarily padded out scenes,
If you are a fan of the cast or the genre, The Kitchen is absolutely worth checking out. It's solid, professionally prepared cinematic fare, that should satisfy any crime fan's appetite.
Many are comparing this to the recent cinema treatment of Widows, which though a well-made film, I found to be disappointingly, one of the more over-rated general releases of recent times. Granted there are similarities, but I found the stories to be quite different and crucially The Kitchen doesn't leave sub-stories untold, by the film's conclusion, as Widows is guilty of doing.
The three female leads are all excellent. One point worth mentioning is that unexpectedly perhaps, considering Melissa McCarthy features, Elisabeth Moss's, Claire, an initially timid and abused victim of a wife, arguably gets the majority of very darkly comic dialogue and scenes, as she transforms into a more than capable hit woman, under the tutelage of Domhnall Gleeson's (also very good), Gabriel O'Malley, an experienced professional assassin. More than anything The Kitchen is successful at depicting the physical, mental, social and relationship changes the three women undergo, whilst inserting themselves, not without significant challenges, into the hierarchy of the Hell's Kitchen underworld. It's not spoiling to suggest the women we see in the final frames, aren't the close friends, who we see, in the first act.
I've seen it quite frequently claimed that The Kitchen has a convoluted plot. I found it quite easy and logical to follow, but one has to keep paying attention. There are a couple of brief scenes during the second act that set up a couple of late and dramatic twists, which end up making perfect sense if you've been following closely and also better explain one character's behavioural changes. It is fair to say, that this not overlong movie of around 100 minutes, is not burdened with any unnecessarily padded out scenes,
If you are a fan of the cast or the genre, The Kitchen is absolutely worth checking out. It's solid, professionally prepared cinematic fare, that should satisfy any crime fan's appetite.