The Kill Room

Grade: C+

The Kill Room has an amusing premise that reminded me of Woody Allen’s Small Time Crooks. In the Allen film, a handful of criminals open up a cookie shop that’s close to a bank they want to tunnel into and rob. The cookie business, which was just a front to get them close to this bank, ends up really taking off, with a line out the door every day. Ultimately they decide “Forget the bank job. Let’s just sell cookies.”

Tarantino veterans Uma Thurman and Samuel L. Jackson star in The Kill Room, from director Nicol Paone (Friendsgiving). Thurman plays Patrice. The art gallery she owns isn’t doing very well. Jackson plays Gordon, a nearby deli/bakery owner connected to the mob. He needs to launder some money, and is aware of Patrice’s predicament, so he cuts her a deal: Reggie – a hitman of his – will provide her with some paintings for her to display, valued extremely high. All she has to do is not actually sell them, and take in her nice cuts.

Reggie has never touched a brush before, at least not for the sake of painting. He is just riffing and improv-ing when he makes these. Gordon observes that one of his works of art looks like “a Smurf with diarrhea wiped its ass on it.” But Reggie’s work (he becomes known as The Bagman) becomes an overnight phenomenon in the art world, and everybody wants one. There’s an old wealthy collector couple, and the idea of them bagging a Bagman piece stimulates some long-dormant activity in the bedroom.

Patrice continually has to tap dance and scrounge up reasons why the Bagman pieces aren’t for sale. She snorts Adderall in her office, and is constantly under the influence of it. Thurman’s high-strung, twitchy, tweaky performance made me anxious. You can feel the actors desperately trying to make the dialogue pop, in the Tarantinian sense. “I’ve never painted before.” “Who gives a +*#%? Just make up some @&$!, MFer!” No points for guessing who says that last line. The Kill Room never quite escalates to frantic madcap tension, most of the comedic bits don’t land, and our lead performance is annoying, even if it’s for understandable reasons. The Smurf analogy suits more than just the painting.

Grade: C+