The Kitchen

The shackles of domesticity are cast off in this oestrogen-charged, good-looking gangster film from Andrea Berloff. The Oscar-nominated co-writer of Straight Outta Compton makes her directorial debut with a 1970s-set story of three Hell's Kitchen housewives (played by Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish and Elisabeth Moss) left destitute when their Irish mafia husbands are incarcerated. Banding together, they decide to get in on the local protection racket action and prove surprisingly adept and scarily ambitious. There are scenes of exhilarating empowerment, wonderful period stylings and a nice turn from Domhnall Gleeson as the trio's ex-military enforcer. But the great gangster films have tended towards the epic and this feels abbreviated; the women's rise isn't granted weighty consideration or much soul-searching and too often they seem like mere mouthpieces for the feminist message. If McCarthy and Moss still bring integrity to their performances, the usually charismatic Haddish is more out of sorts. And, with a script (adapted from a comic-book mini-series) that favours stating the obvious, unlike the excellent Widows, it's a frustratingly unsubtle affair.