Melissa McCarthy is Kathy Brennan, Tiffany Haddish is Ruby O'Carroll, and Elisabeth Moss is Claire Walsh. These three women are friends and they are married to men who are part of a rather illegal lifestyle. Basically, they're gangster's wives, but with none of the rewards that you normally see heaped on women in this kind of situation. And things get worse when their husbands are arrested and jailed, leaving the women to fend for themselves. After being given an insulting amount to live on, they decide to help the local criminals collect their protection money. Then they end up deciding to run some of the territory themselves.
Although it's very familiar territory, The Kitchen differentiates itself from other films like this by showing the women moving into power, and also by showing how they don't necessarily have to copy everything that the men do. They work smart, they use the right connections, and they often decide to show a little compassion when others may have been ruthless. The men they married seemed to enjoy their lifestyle, whereas the women are forced into their position, growing into their roles as certain characteristics become necessary.
Writer-director Andrea Berloff makes her debut in the big chair, and does a great job of things. She's written a number of screenplays before this one, but this feels like a project with material that she finds more to connect with, in terms of the interesting mechanics of how someone develops a reputation in the criminal world, and in terms of the female angle.
All three leads are excellent, and all have a very different view on their predicament. Moss takes time to ease into her role, having arguably suffered the most from her husband, but grows with confidence as she befriends the dangerous Gabriel O'Malley (Domnhall Gleeson, doing a decent job). McCarthy is the one who seems the most well-balanced, doing what needs to be done and trying to manage the growth in ways that don't exceed their aims, and Haddish has fun as the woman who becomes the most at ease with her new lifestyle. Margo Martindale is an entertainingly horrible mother-in-law, and everyone else onscreen does just fine.
With everyone, and everything, in place, it's worth mentioning how well Berloff also does at pitching the tone perfectly. This is an entertaining film, but it neither makes too much light of the choices being made, and nor does it wallow in one bleak scene after another. It creates a movie world that allows for serious moments, some lightness, and a building of tension as viewers wonder just how dangerous things might get for the women doing a much better job in "a man's world" than the men who wanted to keep them in their place.
And with a pretty great dramatic turn from McCarthy, it also allows me to say that even if you can't stand The Heat, try getting into The Kitchen.
8/10
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