The Kill Room

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.

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.

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.

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.