TeenzTen An action-packed slog

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

tieman64 "You know what I didn't do today? I didn't vote." – Carolyn StiltonI absolutely hated "Kansas City" upon first viewing. Its pace seemed strange, its flashbacks seemed oddly placed, its camera seemed to dwell on unimportant details and none of its characters seemed to exist to propel any clearly defined story forward. In other words, though I'd seen virtually every other Robert Altman film, "Kansas City" still left me in a state of bewilderment.But as is often the case with Altman, "Kansas City" began to make sense - in so far as Altman desires to make sense; his films seem to embrace a certain chaos - upon second viewing. Filled with loving shots of jazz musicians, the film is itself a jazzy tone poem, Altman coming at the audience from odd angles, asking us to pick up on his shifting rhythms of plot and character, themes of race, politics, violence and money. Consider the subtle juxtapositions Altman weaves into the film...A poor white man (Johnny O'Hara) paints his face black and robs a wealthy black man. Seeking assistance, the black man visits a powerful black crime boss called Seldom Seen. Seldom agrees to help, kidnaps Johnny and kills him.In contrast, Johnny's wife (Blondie O'Hara) kidnaps a wealthy white woman (Carolyn Stilton) while she applies a white beauty mask. Carolyn is married to Henry Stilton, a powerful politician. Blondie wants Henry to negotiate with the crime lord so that she may get her husband back. Blondie is eventually killed by Carolyn Stilton. While this drama is unfolding, other characters enter the mix. A young Charlie Parker, years away from musical fame, finds a pregnant black girl. He takes her to a maternity ward. Meanwhile, we learn that Blondie had her baby aborted because Johnny didn't want kids.Similarly, a poor black cab driver (who helped Johnny stage his robbery) is taken to a back alleyway and killed by Seldom and his gang. In contrast, Henry Stilton's goons kill a white man in broad daylight because he was hampering their efforts to falsify local election ballots.And so on and on it goes, Altman juxtaposing his jazz notes, "Kansas City" less a linear narrative than a series of contrasting sequences or oppositional musical riffs, some obvious, some subtle, but all revolving around class, race and gender. Blackface paint is mirrored to white beauty cream, black crime lords are mirrored to corrupt white politicians, political thugs are mirrored to violent gangsters, abortions are mirrored to pregnancies, loving marriages are mirrored to loveless couples, poverty is mirrored to power, underground gambling joints and brothels are mirrored to above ground poll booths and ballot stations.Blondie O'Hara, the young kidnapper, is herself contrasted with Carolyn Stilton, the woman she kidnaps. Blondie loves her husband and would do anything for him. Mrs Stilton, in contrast, is constantly doped up on opium and has long given up on her marriage. Furthermore, Blondie is constantly emulating Kansas City native Jean Harlow, an actress whom she idolises. This notion of "narrative emulation" is itself intended to mirror the "cutting contests" between the jazz musicians sprinkled throughout the film. Just as the musicians borrow from one another and weave each other's material into what they are improvising, Blondie borrows from the movies and weaves Harlow's tough girl phrases and expressions into her conversation. But Blondie's toughness is all a facade, a suit of armour used to compensate for her petite size and coarse environment. While Blondie gives up her child and is constantly subservient to her husband, it is Carolyn Stilton who possesses true strength. Despite her permanently doped up state, Carolyn constantly gives the impression that she knows more than she's letting on, always absorbing information and assessing her surroundings. Her final line, "I didn't vote", itself lets us know that she has long cut herself off from a venal world which she refuses to legitimize.And so with "Kansas City" - a film which ends with a crime lord counting money in the dark corners of a jazz club - Altman has abstracted the politics of power and persuasion, threat and privilege. Everything in the film hinges on social power, Altman drawing a clean line between those violent people who wield power and all those pathetic dreamers who try to grab it but never succeed in doing so for more than a fleeting moment.The political corruption of the city's democratic machine (the country was built on voting fraud and rigged elections; practises common even today), and the expanding influence of Hollywood (and the power of film to seduce and destroy people such as Blondie), is as important to Altman as the racial segregation that produces Kansas City's two worlds: the white world, dominated by the Stilton's, and the inverted black world of Seldom Seen, a vampiric world of music which seems to only come to life long after the surface world has gone to sleep.The film is also unique in the way it offers jazz music an unprecedented role within the diegetic world. This music is constantly "seeping into" he story, providing a kind of tapestry for the characters to perform against. The result is that the jazz music seems to become intertwined with the very social climate that influences it. Altman himself has said that it was his intention that jazz be the structure of the entire film. Whilst a typical song lasts 3 minutes, a jazz tune lasts as much as 17, the effect being that many of the film's scenes are elongated and purposefully stretched out. "Seldom Seen is like a brass instrument," Altman says, "when it's his turn to solo, he does long monologues and riffs. But the discussions of the two women are like reed instruments, saxophones having duets."8/10 - Best appreciated as a kind of cinematic jazz, the plot lethargically frustrating as it intrigues.

sekander The music is superb. The movie is so-so. The period sets are perfect and its just like being back in KC during the infamous Pendergast era. Altman made this movie as a paean to his hometown and the music that came out of it. One cannot divorce the music from the movie. Either you are a jazz fan or you're not. If you're not, you won't like this movie. Its that simple. If you are, you are really in for a treat. The film features all of the "new" stars in jazz from the mid-90's (James Carter and Craig Handy on saxes, Mark Whitfield on guitar, Geri Allen and Cyrus Chestnut on piano....the list goes on and on. They all play the legends of jazz that came out of Kansas City-people like Count Basie, Joe Williams, Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins. A veritable treat for the in-the-know jazz fan but probably a bore for anyone else. Altman stays on the music longer than most directors would because this is a film about the music as much as it is about the plot. And here's the real irony. Movie buffs will say they wished Altman wouldn't have devoted so much time to the music and jazz buffs will say they wished Altman would have done away with the ridiculous, annoying plot and grating performance by Jennifer Jason Leigh and focused entirely on the music. How to please everyone? The end result is uneven but there's enough here to keep all parties interested.If any actor should be singled out, it should be Harry Belafonte. His turn as the underworld kingpin, Seldom Seen, is fantastic. He speaks in a low, gruff rasp but his dialogue is truly worth the effort to understand. When he goes off on the Marcus Garvey speech, its worth the price of admission. Of course, it helps to know who Marcus Garvey was. Jazz fans (and reggae fans, too) will get it. After all, this is a movie for them/us.

ap1704 These comments about the movie and a question. I enjoyed the movie, the music , and the "feel" of the film. It seemed very authentic: the sets, the lighting, costumes and the extras in the background. Also the social atmosphere that was presented in the film of class, race and economics was very effective. I was mesmerized watching as the film progressed. However, I am at a lost as to what it was about when it got to the end. Can anyone please explain the ending? I saw the movie twice and must have missed something. Why did the politician's wife kill the crook's wife? How did her husband know that this would happen and was outside the house waiting for his wife, who wordlessly gets in the car with him. Thanks.

Brandt Sponseller I'm not convinced that this film is not more well-respected just because director Robert Altman's name is attached. Show Kansas City to your average casual film-viewer without letting them know who directed, or you can even let them know, if they're not cineastes and do not know Altman, and I think the average opinion would be much lower. That's not to say there are no positive qualities to the film, but it is far more burdened with flaws, and it's more likely to ultimately annoy rather than entertain.The story is of course set in Kansas City, during the depression. Blondie O'Hara (Jennifer Jason Leigh) enters the home of socialite Carolyn Stilton (Miranda Richardson) under false pretenses (she says she's there to give Mrs. Stilton her normal manicure) and ends up pulling a gun on her. Mrs. Stilton figures it's just your run-of-the-mill robbery, but O'Hara wants something else. O'Hara's husband, Johnny (Dermot Mulroney), has gotten himself into trouble and Mrs. Stilton's influential husband, Henry (Michael Murphy), an adviser to President Roosevelt, can help him out.Let me mention the positive aspects of the film first, because otherwise I'll likely run out of room. The primary asset is the film's music. Because of the setting, including that a lot of the film takes place in a black jazz joint, the "Hey Hey Club", the music is jazz during its transitional phase between swing and early bop--heck, even a young Charlie Parker (Albert J. Burnes) is in the film, although the setting has Parker too young to be shown performing (and Parker turns out to be irrelevant to the film). But it does have musicians playing Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, and Count Basie, and the musicians who perform throughout the film read like all all-star roster of contemporary jazzers, including David Murray, Joshua Redman, David "Fathead" Newman, Ron Carter, Christian McBride, Geri Allen and Victor Lewis. The music is excellent if you're a jazz fan, as Altman must be.The other asset is that production designer Stephen Altman, the director's son, does an excellent job getting the period setting right. Especially if you're into classic cars of the era, the film will be a treat to watch, but all of the details seem right. The cinematography isn't bad, either.However, even as good as the music is, it just doesn't work within the context of the film. Most of the musicians can't act but try to. Maybe it's that they weren't directed very well by Altman. He features them on camera too much, and even lingers on them for relatively long songs. A concert film featuring the band would have been great. In the middle of a dramatic film, these shots just feel like padding with bad acting.The story itself, although relatively simple--too simple, perhaps, is chopped up and told as if it's going to have some big revelation or twist. Altman keeps unnecessarily jumping back and forth in time--but just a few hours, and he keeps unnecessarily jumping back and forth between different sets of characters in the middle of (very) long scenes. I guess he realized the scenes were too long and needed to be broken up. The scenes should have been cut back instead. More should have happened. Far too often, scenes feel like they're stretched out with pointless dialogue just to increase the film's running time.And the dialogue isn't just pointless. It's loaded with non-sequiturs. I've never experienced laudanum or known anyone who has, but one of the characters, shown as a laudanum user, regularly speaks gibberish. At least that seems to be the excuse for it. It turns out that everyone in the film routinely speaks gibberish as if they're on some kind of heavy drugs. Not every line is like that, but enough are that it's relatively inexplicable. The plot in general has a lot of non-sequiturs. It seems almost as if Altman, who co-wrote the script with Frank Barhydt, was shooting for some kind of bizarre surrealism, except that surrealism seems so out of context for the setting and basic gist of the film, and it's too understated to seem intentional. I just don't get why people in the film would speak and behave so oddly.Then there are the performances. I've liked Jennifer Jason Leigh in some films--I absolutely love eXistenZ (1999) for example, and she certainly can act like "someone other than herself", which a lot of people seem to use as one of the main criteria for "good acting", but her character here is so annoying that I couldn't wait for the film to be over. She bizarrely barks out her dialogue in a grating accent. When I thought of it upon waking up this morning with my review gelling in my head (I usually watch films at night then think about them while I head off to sleep--reviews often pop up almost fully formed when I awake), I burst out laughing remembering the character. It's something I'd more expect from an alien sketch on a show like MadTV or Saturday Night Live. Imagine Prymatt Conehead with a sour and somewhat hyper Brooklyn attitude.Harry Belafonte, as the ridiculously named "Seldom Seen", also tended to be annoying--and he probably has more lines than anyone else but Leigh. A number of other characters were primarily annoying, too. The only one I really didn't mind was Miranda Richardson, despite the gibberish, and she's also gorgeous, so she's a treat to watch.There are a couple good sequences, but they tended to be those focused on "action"--when characters were up and about, doing something rather than sitting in a room and talking, and the climax was great (I even cheered). Unfortunately, those sequences were few and far between. The majority of the film just seems flat and drawn out. My advice is to just buy the soundtrack; avoid the film.