THE KITCHEN ★★
(MA) 103 minutes
One of the better lines in last year’s mainly tepid feminist caper Ocean’s 8 came from Sandra Bullock's character, aiming to inspire her sisters in con-artistry during the lead-up to the big heist. “Somewhere out there is an eight-year-old girl, lying in bed, dreaming of being a criminal. Let’s do it for her.”
This imagined little girl could be the ideal viewer of The Kitchen, the first feature directed by Andrea Berloff (the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Straight Outta Compton). Set in the late 1970s in the then low-rent Manhattan neighbourhood of Hell’s Kitchen, it’s both an amoral gangster saga and a bizarrely right-on message movie in the spirit of Sheryl Sandberg’s bestselling book Lean In, proposing that women can be at least the equals of men when it comes to operating protection rackets and wiping out the competition.
Elisabeth Moss and Tiffany Haddish in The Kitchen. Credit:AP
The women in question – and incidentally, what couldn’t David O. Russell have done with this cast? – are Kathy Brennan (Melissa McCarthy), Claire Walsh (Elisabeth Moss) and Ruby O’Carroll (Tiffany Haddish), all married to members of the Irish mob that rules the streets (though the African-American Ruby, originally from Harlem, remains a comparative outsider).
When their husbands are jailed for armed robbery, they decide to pick up where the men left off, playing hardball where necessary but bringing a distinctly female approach to their core business of extortion, including a willingness to listen and negotiate.
It sounds like a joke but mostly it isn’t – though Berloff is not much interested in the logistics of how the three get away with challenging the male status quo. Indeed, I assumed initially that the plot was based on fact, on the grounds that no filmmaker would otherwise ask us to swallow so many improbabilities one after another.
In fact the source material is wholly fictional – a comic-book series by Ollie Masters and Ming Doyle. That could explain a few things,especially the weird mix of sentiment and half-realised black comedy that ensues when the downtrodden Claire bonds with a charming enforcer (Domhnall Gleeson, wildly miscast) who helps her connect with her inner bloodlust. (We understand this is a healthy relationship because she says “I can make my own choices” and he says “I know”.)
Ultimately, the film makes less sense literally than it does as an allegory of Hollywood in the MeToo era – especially in the scenes with Bill Camp as a high-end gangster whose fancy apartment could be the home of a veteran producer with a cabinet full of Oscars. Defying expectations, this character proves to be one of the good ones, spelling out his place at the top of the pecking order but gladly giving a helping hand to up-and-coming talent.
Nor can it be an accident that his wife, who cites Gloria Steinem in praise of the newcomers, is played by prominent Harvey Weinstein accuser Annabella Sciorra. More ambiguous is the symbolic place occupied by the indomitable Margo Martindale as a gravel-voiced matriarch who has long run Hell’s Kitchen from behind the scenes and brooks no competition.
All this is fascinating on a conceptual level, and pros such as Camp and Martindale are more than capable of looking after themselves. But as a director Berloff is unable to find a tone and style that might make emotional sense of the material or to generate any kind of spontaneous interplay between her stars, who even when positioned side by side seem to be giving separate, unrelated performances.
Moss devotes herself to displaying the after-effects of trauma in a rather fussy way, while McCarthy disappointingly concentrates on holding our sympathy rather than tapping into the feral qualities showcased in her broader comic vehicles such as Tammy (where she was frankly a lot more alarming).
Even Haddish, who has a couple of electric moments, often appears to be standing around waiting for the chance to show some attitude. At least she’s well served by costume designer Sarah Edwards, who seizes the chance to go to town with 1970s fashions: a shot of Ruby crossing the street at night in a brown leather trenchcoat and flat-brimmed red hat has the kick that 90 per cent of The Kitchen lacks.
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