The Kitchen - no spoilers

What's cooking in Hell's Kitchen?

Set in the late 1970s, The Kitchen is a gangster film based on the DC/Vertigo graphic novel of the same name. I'd not heard of the comic before I saw this, but the concept seemed worth a watch.

The Irish mob is failing; the leadership is lacking, and the men are feckless. Their protection racket is failing, with people turning to others for help or just not paying, because there's no protection provided by the mob in the crime-ridden New York of the seventies. Three of the leaders decide that the solution is to go into loans, and pull off a number of heists to get seed funding. We join the story as they attempt to pull off the final job to net them enough cash to begin. It goes badly, with an FBI operation reeling them in.

The men are cliches; one wants to stop doing this and has a semblance of a normal life with his wife Kathy and the two kids. Another is aggressively alpha, with a black trophy wife, Ruby, who is accepted grudgingly and despised behind her back. The final husband is a wife-beater, who takes his frustrations out on his wife and has caused her to lose her child. They get sent down; the families are promised to be 'looked after' by Little Jimmy, who takes over the gang. But the promises are every bit as weak as the protection that the Irish are offering.

The women end up facing their demons and taking over the mob. Their pitch is that you pay them, then they'll look after the community, like a family. They grow, expand, and have to face the implications of their husbands returning from jail and the inevitable conflict that it brings.

The Guardian didn't like this one; it especially hated the 'doing something good for the community' line. And yet, in a way, the protagonists are doing exactly that; making the streets safer for their community because the NYPD aren't.

You can see the comic book antecedents from the style and script of the film, which is also very faithful to the feel of the 1970s. At the end, I was left wanting to find out what happened next, which is always a good sign. I enjoyed this more than Color Out of Space the night before. The growth curves of the three protagonists are interesting and the acting done well.

Recommended.
Obviously, if you don't like films about organised crime in a sympathetic light, don't watch this.

3 May 2020