El arte de matar

Patrice (Uma Thurman) owns a struggling art gallery in the superficial moneyed New York City high art scene. She's approached by neighbor store owner Gordon (Samuel L. Jackson) to launder his money. She reluctantly accepts, but she still needs real paintings for the sales. Gordon assigns the painting chore to his assassin Reggie (Joe Manganiello).

I love the skewering of the high art crowd. I like this premise. I like these actors. It's all working great until Reggie shows up at the gallery. I thought the whole point of Bagman is that he remains anonymous like Banksy. The writing needs some subtlety and more smarts. I get where the premise is trying to go with the story. It goes on the wrong track a bit.

The casting was remarkable, luring viewers in with excessive temptation from the start. As the story unfolds, you'll discover that the narrative and plot are indeed worth investing your time in. However, as the movie progresses, it loses momentum and ultimately, the execution falls disappointingly short.

The film explores the concept of selling something you don't desire but end up purchasing because everyone else is doing so. In essence, it delves into the notion that if you have an abundance of wealth, you become a pawn in one way or another. Uma Thurman dominates the screen throughout, delivering a performance in line with her character. Regrettably, the movie's conclusion is so devoid of meaning that it extinguishes any remaining excitement.

Whether you choose to watch it or not, hardly any difference.

The Kill Room is a crime satire set for slaying in the modern art world. Catering to an audience that might not be hip to those in jokes, director Nicol Paone wisely fills her canvas with the witty Samuel L. Jackson, the sexy Uma Thurman, and the chiseled Joe Manganiello. Although hung on stories seen before, The Kill Room is an entertaining enough piece worth a 98-minute glance in any cinematic gallery.

Scripted by Jonathan Jacobson, The Kill Room is amusing crime fiction wrapped in a comedic body bag as Reggie's murders eventually transform into avant-garde art. Reggie becomes known as the Bagman whose art, naturally, becomes more of a success than the laundering biz. The Kill Room itself then dips into a slight case of thievery as the plot follows Woody Allen's Small Time Crooks, which also features a cover business that becomes more of a success than the actual crime. As life imitates art, so too does art imitate art.

The Kill Room, like the art being satirized within, has clever subtext but lacks that deep impression. The movie successfully captures the transitory nature of art styles noting such as an allegory of movies as they exist within modern streaming services. The Kill Room itself might not present a shocking spectacle like the Bagman but when paired with a proper wine and cheese, could nicely kill off a Friday night.

Seeking a better way of laundering his mafia connected money, Samuel L Jackson discovers that the world of art where value is relative is the perfect tool to achieve this. He engages with spiky gallery owner / art dealer Uma Thurman who herself is facing hard times, to run this, with his hit man colleague Joe Manganiello persuaded to start paining great avant-garde works. The difficulty is that filthy rich New Yorkers start showing an interest in the paintings and long to buy them much to the annoyance of Jackson's mafia pals.

Whilst it is nice to see Tarantino favourites Thurman and Jackson come together to nicely play off each other, this is rather a flat, cold story, hampered both by the rather tired comic convention that any old rubbish will pass as art in snobbish art circles plus it all leads to a bit of a feeble, unconvincing climax. Manganiello seems barely awake throughout, although the rest of the supporting cast are good fun. It is however Thurman, who is terrific here and Jackson, admittedly doing his usual shouty, sweary, Tarantinoesque character, that make this worth checking out.

I'm not going to say that 'The Kill Room' is the greatest film even, but I did find it on a streaming service and it looks like it was made specially for that platform. In other words, compared the dross which is mere 'content' you can find there, actually coming across a film with recognisable actors really was a breath of fresh air. It's because of this that I probably enjoyed it more than it probably deserved.

Uma Thurman plays a struggling art dealer who gets a 'break' in terms of selling art when career criminal Samuel L Jackson drops by and offers her a business proposition. It starts out well and her gallery takes off, but soon she realises that she has effectively made a deal with the devil, or at least the kind of organised criminals you really don't want to invite to your high class cocktail parties.

I quite liked the dialogue. Yes, the characters themselves may be - deliberately (?) vapid and shallow - but they were at least funny. Or rather they were suitably scathing to other - equally shallow and vapid - art critics who infest the high-brown scene. Thurman's intern may be a little bit annoying, but, apart from her, the combination of Thurman and Jackson carry the film with ease.

No, it'll never be up there with their other offerings like 'Kill Bill' or 'Pulp Fiction,' but if you're a fan of either actor, you'll definitely get something out of the film. Or, if you're just tired of films on steaming services that cost about as much as a glass of milk to get made, at least this one had a budget that the film-makers bothered to spend on a script and competent actors who could make the most of it.