The Kill Room

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.

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.

Was not too ardous and partially entertaining, relatively funny in parts. Not being a lover of fine art I felt the 1 hour 40ish aperture into the world of the high brow art industry to be reassuringly confirmational of my previous understanding of the type of people who inhabit that world. Pretentious and somewhat pathetically obsessed with one upmanship. So nothing new there. The Movie itself was slightly farcical which may have been the intent. But I found it hard to believe the ease at which certain characters took their introduction to the world of organised crime. Overall I didn't feel as if my time had been stolen. But its only ever going to be experienced once as there is absolutely nothing that merits a revisit. Mediocre without being Awful.

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.

Great to see Uma Thurman back on the screen, because she is such a wonderful actress. Where has she been all these past years? But however charming she (still) is, and however mildly amusing this movie is, it fails to become really laugh out loud funny.

Humor is personal, so perhaps others wont mind the cheap in your face jokes though, but I found them to be just a bit tiring.

The story is about Uma Thurman's money loosing art gallery. Then she meets Samuel L Jackson, who is part of a criminal enterprise with LOTS of money to launder. They start cooperating and then the story kinda tanks from there on...

Could have been better. Not bad, but defnitely not recommendable either if you are looking for a good laugh.