The Kitchen is the epitome of an un-ambitious movie that is less of a love song to the crime-dramas of the 1970s and instead features a myriad of topes and clichés from the era.
The Kitchen
(2019)
Genre(s): Drama, Crime
Warner Bros. | R – 102 min. – $35.99 | November 5, 2019
Date Published: 12/01/2019 | Author: The Movieman
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Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the Blu-ray I reviewed in this Blog Post.
The opinions I share are my own.
THE MOVIE — 2.5/5 |
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Plot Synopsis: 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 (MELISSA MCCARTHY), Ruby (TIFFANY HADDISH) and Claire (ELISABETH MOSS), things are about to take a dramatic and radical turn. When the FBI sends their husbands (JAMES D’ARCY JAMES, JAMES BADGE DALE, JEREMY BOBB) to prison, the three women take business into their own hands by running the rackets and taking out the competition.
Quick Hit Review: The Kitchen is based off of a DC-Vertigo comic book series set in 1978 Hell’s Kitchen. This movie never really felt or looked right from the get-go, worse yet, filled with the clichés and tropes seen numerous time before in every crime-drama set during the time period. The storyline also wasn’t all that engrossing and actually, taking the baseline premise, I thought Widows did it better, even though that movie had its own issues. On the positive side, the acting at least was passable with Melissa McCarthy showing she can do drama quite well and Elisabeth Moss played the more mousy-turned-strong role fine, however, although she did deliver a decent performance, Tiffany Haddish didn’t seem to gel with both her character or with McCarthy and Moss.
The Kitchen is the directorial debut from Andrea Berloff who previously scripted World Trade Center, Straight Outta Compton (for which she was nominated for a Academy Award), Blood Father and Sleepless, and based on the, being kind, lackluster box office even with its reported $38 million production budget, not sure if she’ll get another shot, but based on this, can’t say I was overly impressed especially considering she also wrote the screenplay. |
SPECIAL FEATURES – 2.0/5 |
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This release comes with a matted slip cover and redemption code for the Digital HD copy. Pretty light in bonus material, two featurettes: Running Hell’s Kitchen (9:01) and Taking Over the Neighborhood (5:22) and a Deleted Scene (1:25). Previews — Shaft, Joker |
VIDEO – 4.5/5 |
| Warner Brothers releases The Kitchen onto Blu-ray where it’s given a 1080p high-definition transfer and presented with a 2.38 widescreen aspect ratio. Although this is a darkly lit movie, the picture quality still isn’t bad, detail was sharp and was, best I could tell, clean with no obvious signs of aliasing, artifacting or other flaws. |
AUDIO – 4.25/5 |
| The movie comes equipped with a basic DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track which does output clear dialogue through the center channel with ambient noises and the score (by Bryce Dessner) gives it some modest depth. Nothing incredible but still relatively effective. |
OVERALL – 2.75/5 |
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Overall, The Kitchen is the epitome of an un-ambitious movie that is less of a love song to the crime-dramas of the 1970s and instead features a myriad of topes and clichés from the era. That said, the performances were alright, including Melissa McCarthy who does show some drama acting chops, however not nearly enough to save an otherwise forgettable and throwaway film. |
Check out some more 1080p screen caps by going to page 2. Please note, these do contain spoilers.