Synopsis
The Kitchen is a 2019 American crime drama that marks Andrea Berloff’s first time in the director’s chair. She also penned the script, pulling inspiration from the DC/Vertigo comic series by Ollie Masters and Ming Doyle. The story is set in the late 1970s and follows three women who fill the power void left when their mobster husbands are locked up. The film pushes beyond classic revenge thrillers to probe how ambition transforms women in a world that usually ignores them.
The action is rooted in Hell’s Kitchen, NYC, in 1978. We meet Kathy Brennan (Melissa McCarthy), a determined Irish-American mom who will do anything to keep her kids fed. Next is Ruby O’Carroll (Tiffany Haddish), the African-American wife of the mob boss’s son, who’s always been seen as the outsider because of her skin color. Finally, there’s Claire Walsh (Elisabeth Moss), a timid, battered wife who endures both physical and emotional abuse from her husband, a small-time thug. When the husbands go away, the women decide to run the only business they know—crime.
When the FBI sweeps the Irish mob, the husbands—two-bit muscle—end up in cuffs, leaving the three wives with empty wallets, empty fridges, and the mob’s silence ringing in their ears. With the rent due and no pity in sight, the trio decides the sidelines aren’t their place. Survival quickly turns into a power play. They snatch the protection cash, broker new alliances, and redraw the map where the husbands used to rule.
At first, the streets expect tears and takeout. They get a corporate merger instead. Kathy, seasoned by midnight drives and early-morning hospital visits, charms the turf and turns sympathy into loyalty. Ruby, a math whiz in a low-neck blouse, calculates risk like poker chips, bending judges and rival crews to her will. And Claire, who once flinched at an open palm, meets Gabriel O’Malley—an ice-eyed hitman played by Domhnall Gleeson—who teaches her the art of the first strike and the last laugh. By the time the husbands get a visitor’s pass at the pens, the wives are already running the show.
As the three women climb the ranks of organized crime, their rise attracts the interest of rival crews, the Italian Mafia, and the federal agents who keep score behind the scenes. Pressure cracks the sisterhood: Ruby’s ambition surges, Kathy’s conscience wavers, and Claire discovers a ruthless side she never knew existed. Ruby longs for a crown she was denied for too long, Kathy fights to keep a shred of honor alive even as blood stacks against her, and Claire, finally free, welcomes the darkness like a long-lost lover.
The breaking point arrives when loyalty fractures. The men, fresh from the yard and hungry for respect, return to a kingdom they no longer recognize. The women, once their foot soldiers, now wield the knives. The final act unfolds in a hail of gunfire and sharp rhetoric, reshaping the underworld and leaving each survivor marked in body and soul.
Cast & Crew
Melissa McCarthy as Kathy Brennan: The award-winning actress trades punchlines for scars, sketching Kathy as the everywoman turned warrior. McCarthy’s comedy roots surface in the character’s sharp retorts and surprising sympathy, yet a deepening darkness warns that the moral compass can crack under too much heat. Kathy is the audience’s anchor in a storm of gun smoke and betrayal.
Tiffany Haddish as Ruby O’Carroll: Haddish steps away from comedy and delivers a stunning dramatic turn as Ruby. The character burns with ambition and a lifetime spent on the fringes because of her race. Ruby wants power and respect, and Haddish plays her with a fierce intelligence that makes every moment crackle.
Elisabeth Moss as Claire Walsh: Moss delivers a jaw-dropping performance. Claire, who starts as a battered wife, quietly becomes the film’s most chilling and commanding force. The leap from victim to confident killer feels both believable and haunting, and it’s the emotional heart of the movie.
Domhnall Gleeson as Gabriel O’Malley: Gleeson plays a Vietnam vet who once delivered hits and now mentors Claire. He carries an unsettling calm, portraying a man who has already embraced death. The silence he creates around Gabriel heightens Claire’s growing fury.
James Badge Dale, Brian d’Arcy James, and Jeremy Bobb: The three actors give voice to the husbands locked far from the power they once held. Their scenes in prison show men who still crave control in a world that has already moved on, and the desperation they project is both sad and unsettling.
Director/Writer: Andrea Berloff: Berloff, who earned an Oscar nod for her work on Straight Outta Compton, makes her directorial debut here. She reshapes the gangster story around women, turning a familiar world on its head and forcing us to reckon with the female experience of violence, ambition, and survival.
IMDb Ratings & Critical Reception
Currently, The Kitchen has a rating of 5.6 out of 10 on IMDb, showing that opinions are mixed. Audiences liked the fresh idea and the standout acting from Elisabeth Moss and Melissa McCarthy, but the movie didn’t quite connect with ticket buyers hoping for a more typical crime story.
Reviewers pointed to land-shifting tone and scattered storylines as the movie’s main flaws. Though the direction is stylish and the period look is striking, critics felt the script crammed too many characters and ideas together without giving enough depth to any of them. Some also noted that the flick missed the raw punch of the original comic and the high-voltage promise of its leading ladies.
On the plus side, several fans and commentators cheered the movie for flipping familiar crime-film tropes. Instead of the slick, heroic brutality of old-school mob dramas, The Kitchen shows crime as cruel, chaotic, and pretty much without glory. It tracks women who step into the gray area of morality not to get rich or powerful, but because life and betrayal leave them no clear way out.
Themes and Analysis
At its heart, The Kitchen flips the gangster story on its head, focusing on women who usually watch from the sidelines or become tragic footnotes. Kathy, Ruby, and Claire aren’t shiny heroes; they’re scarred antiheroes, shaped by the streets and sharpened by the need to survive. Their evolution isn’t merely about seizing guns or territory; it’s about crafting a sense of who they are when the world has insisted they are nothing.
The film digs into several big ideas:
Empowerment through Survival: What starts as a fight to stay afloat turns into a fight to steer the ship. The women discover they can run the show—and do it better than the men who once dismissed them. This arc reflects countless true stories of those pushed to the edges who step into the center and refuse to back down.
Race and Exclusion: Ruby’s path cuts straight to the heart of double prejudice. She’s a woman in a man’s world, and on top of that, she’s a Black woman in an Irish-dominated mob. The in-laws tolerate her at best and resent her at worst. She answers the daily slights with strategy and courage, carving a space at the table that no one offered her.
Abuse and Agency: Claire’s journey is the film’s emotional core. After years of being battered behind closed doors, her violent reaction isn’t simply payback; it’s a declaration that she will no longer be defined by someone else’s fists. Every blow she strikes is a line drawn in red, saying that she owns her body and her story now.
Morality and Compromise
Kathy’s story digs into that quiet war we all know: choosing between what’s right and what’s required to get by. You watch her make small concessions that pile up into something heavy, and each step feels both necessary and heartbreaking. The blame never lands on her, yet you know each choice chips away at the woman she wanted to be, all to keep her family safe and the chaos at bay.
Conclusion
The Kitchen didn’t break records and the critics left a mix of reviews, but it carved a space for itself by taking a tired genre and flipping the script. The filmmakers looked at a crime saga and asked: what if the ones cleaning up the wreckage are the ones everyone else ignored? The answer is a raw, unpolished vision of power that doesn’t roar but quietly settles in the hands of women who’ve held the broom for decades.
Led by bravely layered performances from McCarthy and Moss, the film doesn’t glamorize the change; it simply shows it, all the grime and cracks included. The pacing has uneven spots and the pacing flags, yet the film earns every reluctant nod for letting the quiet women finally write the last chapter. In Hell’s Kitchen, the men once commanded the alleys, but now the alleys have learned to listen to the women who were always walking the other way.
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