Game recognizes game and there’s no hustle like hustling a hustler in “The Kill Room,” an unlikely all-star comedy about lowdown and dirty contract killing spilling over into the pretentious world of modern art and the “types” who inhabit it.

The darkness of the murdering tends to mute the comedy as the filmmakers struggle to make a mash-up of “Leon: The Professional,” “The Ice Man” and “Velvet Buzzsaw.” But whatever the shortcomings of comic-turned-director Nicol Paone (“Friendsgiving” was hers), the players and the mere casting of them are good for laughs.

Uma Thurman is Patrice, struggling owner of Manhattan’s Program Gallery, where she’s losing business, losing artists and losing her patience with her too-precious intern (Amy Keum, fun). Leslie catches Patric snorting in the middle fo a big opening.

“Don’t JUDGE me. It’s just Adderall.”

Samuel L. Jackson is Gordon, the Yiddish-speaking owner of the Neptune Bakery & Deli. Or so it seems. Gordon is actually “The Black Dreidel,” a “best bialys” baker who is serving as a front for a mob murder-for-hire business. Sort of like what Danny Aiello is up to in “The Professional.”

The Black Dreidel’s “bag man” is Reggie, an Italian-American (Joe Manganiello) contract killer whose preferred weapon is that bane of modern existince, the plastic shopping bag. Reggie is a mug and a bit of a brooder.

But all this money changing hands has Gordon fretting about how “they got Al Capone,” the IRS. He needs a way to launder cash and put it on the books. Patrice’s Adderall hook-up (Matthew Maher) accidentally gives Gordon the idea.

His “maybe we could help each other out,” IRS “never blinks an eye” at insane prices for art” pitch to drug-addled Patrice just gets him rejected and a “Are you really man-splaining money laundering to me?” lecture from her.

But things are dire. A star artist (Maya Hawke) is flipping out. A rival gallery owner (Dree Hemingway) is burying her in put-downs.

What’s a hustler to do? Dive into a new hustle. Only Patrice doesn’t know where Gordon’s money is coming from or what Reggie, commissioned to contrive “modern” expressionist artworks using bloodied bags for texture, etc., really does for a living.

He’s just the mysterious “Bagman,” whose art is delivered, paid for in cash, with Patrice taking out a cut as she writes checks back to Gordon’s mob overlords’ art “trust.”

The conceit here, that the art world is overrun with loathesome “African dictators,” arms dealers, Russians thugs, “oil tycoon/mobster types,” that they’re all pretenders, con artists and tax cheats with no “eye,” just the money to fake having taste, is clever.

Thurman, Jackson and Manganiello land a laugh or three, with our “Pulp Fiction” co-leads setting off comic sparks. Absurd situations, accidentally building “buzz” for this “hot new (young) artist,” “love your work” lying your way across the Big Miami Art Show (inspired by Art Basel, not named that) inspire chuckles.

Larry Pine plays a vapid, rich “They buy it because they think they need it” collector. Debi Mazar gives an edge to The Kimono, an al-powerful New York Times art critic nicknamed for her choice of attire.

But if screen comedies are poker games, then Paone, working from a script by Jonathan Jacobson, leaves a lot of money on the table, not properly playing the wonderful hand she’s dealt. But “The Kill Room,” which also needed a better title, has enough funny going on to recommend it if you don’t think of all it might have been.

Rating: R, graphic violence, drug abuse (snorting) and profanity

Cast: Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson, Joe Manganiello, Amy Keum, Debi Mazar, Maya Hawke, Dree Hemingway, Jennifer Kim and Larry Pine.

Credits: Directed by Nicol Paone, scripted by Jonathan Jacobson. A Shout! Factory release.

Running time: 1:37