Daniel Kaluuya has been a prolific actor for a while now. I first saw his talents on 15 Million Merits, in an episode of Black Mirror season 1 on Netflix. Ever since he’s been in Get Out the breakout hit horror film by Jordan Peele, Sicario by the great director Denis Villueve, and won an Academy Award for his role as Fred Hampton, the leader of the Black Panthers, in Judas and the Black Messiah. Now he branches out to behind the camera as the first-time director of The Kitchen.

Izi (Kano) is a single man with no attachments, or so he thought, who lives in a community known as The Kitchen in a dystopian London. While attending a funeral of a woman he gets noticed by a teen boy. This boy follows him and eventually, the man takes him under his wing because the boy has no one to look after him since his mother has passed away. Together they have to navigate the hectic and crazy world they live in.

Kaluuya, Kibwe Tavares, and writer Joe Murtagh have created a film with very relevant subject matter. Overpopulation and children without mothers to help care for them are two subjects not enough filmmakers focus on. These topics are obviously two subjects that matter to these filmmakers. In big cities, some housing situations are very bad. I have lived in a few rough situations in my day but not like depicted in this movie. I wouldn’t know what to do if I had to share a shower with a bunch of people. Now I am currently having problems with my water but once again not on this level where it’s shut off randomly. These conditions are deplorable.  

I had two brothers and a sister so growing up an orphan because your father left you and your mother had passed away can only be a bad situation. I have though had some father figures in my life in the form of coaches or bosses. So men, not my father, have helped make me who I am today. I was mentored by good men and not bad men. If I ended up being mentored by bad men I could have ended up going down the wrong path. That’s where Benji (Jedaiah Bannerman) could have gone wrong as well but he had a good man as his friend and mentor instead. This world is a tough place to grow up as it is for a young boy.

Kaluuya was once a young unknown quantity as an actor in his earlier years. He got a shot and took it. It makes sense that he would get some stars in other avenues, such as the music industry, to star in his first film, Kano, a stand-up comedian, Demmy Ladipo, and some unknown to United States audiences, Hope Ikpoku and Jedaiah Bannerman. These actors were all very good in their roles. They played their parts in this story very well. The urban setting helped make them believable. I enjoyed all of their work in this movie.

This film had a feel of Do the Right Thing for me. It reminded me of that great film from Spike Lee. The tensions were high when these people who lived in this harsh city were being threatened by the government that ruled them and also had a voice they could get behind. A local DJ called  Lord Kitchener (Ian Wright) has that voice which is very similar to the Samuel L Jackson character Mister Senor Love Daddy. Kaluuya is probably a fan of that film and infused his movie with these elements out of respect for the great filmmaker Spike Lee. 

The Kitchen has a lot of aspects that remind me of my past and films from the past. Kaluuya and company infused this movie with familiar elements but the overall story was engaging and interesting as a whole. The plight of the main characters was a real issue a lot of people could get behind. The urban setting is very prevalent in this country in its big cities and other countries as well. London made as good a place to set this story as any. As his first directorial outing, this was a good first film for Kaluuya. I’ll be interested to see what he and this cast do next.

3 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen