Movie Review 'The Kitchen' Sinks

The Kitchen is a stultifying mess of a movie. This failure of tone and purpose features three exceptional actresses starring in the same movie, yet often appearing as if they are in different movies, acting with different purpose. The Kitchen stars Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish, and Elisabeth Moss in a story of late 70s mobsters.

In the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of New York City, three women are living hand to mouth in the shadows of their criminal husbands. When those husbands get themselves busted during a robbery, Kathy (Melissa McCarthy), Ruby (Tiffany Haddish), and Claire (Elisabeth Moss), are left to fend for themselves in difficult economic times.

The Irish mob that Ruby's husband Kevin (James Badge Dale) acted as de-facto leader of, thanks to his domineering Irish mother, Helen (Margo Martindale), immediately left these women and their families behind. With nowhere to turn, the trio combine forces, and set about finding the areas where the Irish mob had failed to make money, and began their own criminal in-roads.

Recruiting a local legend psychopath named Gabriel (Domhnall Gleeson) to be their muscle, the ladies begin offering a protection racket in the neighborhood, and begin raking in the cash. When the Irish mob objects, innocence is truly lost, and violence assures the ladies' ascension to the top of a minor criminal empire. That is until an Italian mobster, played by Bill Camp, arranges to have their husbands released.

The Kitchen was written and directed by Andrea Berloff, the co-writer of the quite good biopic Straight Outta Compton, and the quite terrible Jamie Foxx feature Sleepless. Berloff's novice status as a director is definitely on display in The Kitchen. Berloff's visual style is dark and indistinct. Night scenes are poorly lit, and scenes with any light have little notable style.

Worse yet though is Berloff's direction of her actors who appear to each be playing in different films. McCarthy is playing an earnest, struggling, working class mom who turns to crime out of desperation. The criminality of McCarthy's Kathy is far too idealized for a story that aims for grit. She's too busy justifying her own good intentions to engage in a plot that appears aimed for something far darker in tone.

Tiffany Haddish meanwhile, is struck with whiplash, as her Ruby is used as a device to create plot tension where none exists. When director Berloff finds herself with nothing to drive the narrative momentum she has, Ruby acts out in a way that defies her character, and only serves to complicate the plot. The choices are lazy and undercooked right up to an ending, which doesn't feel earned in any way.

The only actors who appear to be in the same movie, acting with the darker intentions of this plot are Moss and Gleeson. As Moss's Claire quickly develops her taste for bloodshed, she and Gleeson's hitman develop a romantic chemistry that could power another, far better movie. Their scenes have a charge the rest of The Kitchen is lacking.

What a shame then that their bloody encounters are at odds with the rest of the movie, which doesn't appear to have the stomach to embrace the gritty, nasty criminal business that Claire and Gabriel get up to. An early third act twist then ruins the whole thing, and drains the whole movie of what little energy it ever had.

The Kitchen is a shockingly bad movie given the talent involved. McCarthy, Haddish and Moss are three remarkable actresses who should have been dynamite together. Instead, an inexperienced director fumbles the narrative and visuals, and strands her actresses in a movie that just doesn't know what it wants to be.