The Kill Room

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.

The movie is not great, the critics are right about that. But you cannot understate what the actors gave us with the little they had. Samuel l jackson is as always giving out a very believable performance as crook gone art fraud, uma thurman was less believable as she stuttered at every businesslike word that was supposed to paint her as a serious art gallery owner. It was kind of hard to watch how played eccentricity can backfire . The side cast was doing a stellar job as well. I felt completely immersed in this bizarre and backwards underground art world. It just never came together, there was no real plot, awkward dialogue and a dissappointing ending. So not as bad as people would want you to believe but not good either.

You got to be convinced to watch a movie with Uma Thurman, her daughter - Maya Hawke, Samuel L. Jackson and Joe Manganiello. Though the grade is pretty low, the execution is pretty damn good. It is entertaining, sarcastic and right in target, regarding its main theme. Maybe the end of it was kind of Shmaltzy, but most of the movie was good enough to be declared as enjoyable.

A Gallery manager, which got into slow period, get a good deal to launder money and turns a hitman into an artistic phenomenon overnight. Things gets tangled and the bizarre deal seem to go and collide an iceberg and the jolly bunch tries to get her way out of the predicament with flavored Characteristics of crime movies genre.

All and all its a great and funny movie that is laughing on the high society representatives and especially about art lovers, that spends their money on un-explained art, that your kids can make even better. For all of those that cannot understand modern art and the way people adore it, this is the movie for you.

The movie is so into poking and biting "fine taste" characters that it is sometimes forget about the main plot and when it returns, it seems so banal, but stable enough to pull its way all the way until the end of this not so long movie. An hour and a half that gets the job done and works for almost the entire runtime.

Reading through these reviews I am once again fascinated how some people can drill down to the slightest detail and pick a movie apart. I, on the other hand, tend to watch something and rate it on my level of enjoyment.

This was OK. It didn't blow me out of the water, but it also wasn't as bad as some of these reviews either.

One thing that disappointed me a bit, was that Reggie's identity was revealed to the public so early, especially given his profession. I thought more could have been done with that. How did he think it was going to be kept a secret from his "bosses"?

Otherwise, it was a good send up of the world of the uber wealthy, all of whom seem to be arrogant and pretty thick. Not only in this movie by the way.