Movie 🎥 Review: “The Kitchen”.

Critics gave it a 24% the users a 69%.

Rated: R with a running time of 1 hr 42 mins, and an IMDb of 5.4/10

Cast: Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish, Elisabeth Moss, Domhnall Gleeson, James Badge Dale, Brian d'Arcy James, Jeremy Bobb, Margo Martindale, Common, and Bill Camp.

Between 8th Ave. and the Hudson River, the Irish mafia runs 20 blocks of a tough New York City neighborhood known as Hell's Kitchen. But for mob wives Kathy, Ruby and Claire, things are about to take a dramatic and radical turn. When the FBI sends their husbands to prison, the three women take business into their own hands by running the rackets and taking out the competition.

The Kitchen is a 2019 American crime film written and directed by Andrea Berloff in her directorial debut. It is based on the DC/Vertigo Comics limited series of the same name by Ollie Masters and Ming Doyle. Produced by New Line Cinema, Bron Creative, and Michael De Luca Productions, the film was theatrically released in the United States on August 9, 2019, by Warner Bros. Pictures. It received mostly negative reviews from critics, who criticized the convoluted plot, and grossed $16 million against its $38 million budget, not good.

So seeing the Critics and users reviews above will tend to question if you should watch this or not. As a film reviewer I ALWAYS watch movies before I look at rating/comments. I’ve found that watching movies “you win some, you lose some…..and some they get rained out”. This movie got rained out…….I stuck with it to see it to the end and was pleasantly surprise with just how entertaining it was. So for me I would have been one that rated it in the 70% range.

Don’t get me wrong it’s a gangster flick set in the Hell's Kitchen burrow of New York circa the late seventies. As awkward as the story line is, the film has serious balls - ironic considering it centers around three wives who step up when their Irish-American criminal husbands are locked up for armed burglary.

This film is a brutal, no-holds-barred cinematic take on the DC comic-book miniseries. These women are here to “kick ass and take names - and they are all out of pencils”. They go toe-to-toe with their male counterparts in numerous ways and theres no time for the stereotypical silent-wife here, they want power and will do whatever's necessary to get it.

Pacing of the film is somewhat off along with chopped editing and sudden time-jumps don't allow the characters to breathe or subplots to fully develop. Bottom line for me…..The Kitchen is well shot, well acted and interestingly vicious. BTW they had great music throughout the film.

Worth the time spent to watch, especially considering we are all "“self-isolated” due to the COVID-19 virus that we are going thru at this time and date.