In The Overwritten, Undercooked 'The Kitchen,' Mob Wives Are Doin' It For Themselves
Andrea Berloff adapts a comics miniseries about mob wives taking over their jailed husbands' rackets; it's at its best once the stilted, speechifying dialogue settles down, and the pulpiness kicks in.
In The Kitchen, Tiffany Haddish snatches a revolver from her just-out-of-jail gangster husband, gets up in his face, and snarls, "It's my business now."
It's a strong moment — one that gets at something deeper than the surface pleasures and platitudes of a mob movie led by women; it intimates just how caustic and corrosive running a business can be. How are the consequences of the American Dream — the ruthless ambitions that drive capitalism — gendered?
