‘The Kitchen’ cooks up a half-baked mob drama

Despite the talented combination of Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish and Elisabeth Moss, “The Kitchen” cooks up a half-baked mob drama. Although there are some solid moments, the resulting concoction is a bit of a mess, the kind that makes one wish these very busy, in-demand performers were a bit more selective.

Adapted from a DC Vertigo graphic novel, the movie is dark and violent, but races through its story in such willy-nilly fashion that the body count piles up without providing much reason to care. And while there would seem to be a female-empowerment message in the premise, the leads and a strong supporting cast have a hard time penetrating this amalgam of organized-crime clichés.

The basic outlines sounds quite a lot like “Widows,” the movie released last year, other than the fact that the story is set in 1978. Beyond the general look, the best aspect of that timeframe is that it provides an excuse to weave a whole bunch of Fleetwood Mac songs into the soundtrack.

Kathy (McCarthy), Ruby (Haddish) and Claire (Moss) are married to a criminal crew, part of an Irish mob operating in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen. When their husbands get arrested (almost immediately) and sent to prison, the three are initially assured that their associates, “We’re gonna take care of you,” a promise that quickly proves hollow.

Watching their finances dwindle, the women decide to take over the men’s operation, running a protection racket involving local residents. Not surprisingly, this runs afoul of those already fleecing the neighborhood, forcing the trio into shifting alliances and showdowns, with the river providing a convenient place to dispose of the collateral damage.

Marking the directorial debut of writer Andrea Berloff (whose credits include “Straight Outta Compton”), “The Kitchen” features lots of tough dialogue that sounds culled from a 1930s gangster movie, delivered by a pretty extraordinary cast. That roster includes Margo Martindale as a mob matriarch, Domhnall Gleeson as a ruthless but lovestruck enforcer, Bill Camp as an honorable Mafia don, Common as an FBI agent, and James Badge Dale as Ruby’s ill-tempered husband.

“The Kitchen” isn’t predictable, exactly, but every beat of it recalls a similar (and more often than not, better) sequence elsewhere. Moreover, the way the film speeds through situations, sometimes via musical montages, blunts their impact, as the story seems to jump from place to place as opposed to coherently building to them.

For McCarthy and Haddish, it’s another starkly dramatic turn. Moss, meanwhile, fresh off the latest season of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” has the meatiest arc as an abused spouse awakened by her transformation — again, a little too quickly — into a cold-blooded criminal.

There’s an old saying that too many cooks spoil the broth. “The Kitchen” certainly starts with a promising array of ingredients, but for whatever reason, it doesn’t pull off the recipe.

“The Kitchen” premieres Aug. 9 in the US. It’s rated R. The movie is being released by Warner Bros., like CNN, a unit of WarnerMedia.