Lechuguilla A kidnapping and a robbery move the plot forward in a film that's less about plot than about cultural ambiance. "Kansas City" is mostly a cinematic expression of place and time. It's 1934, when gangsters and jazz ruled and Blacks and Whites went their separate ways.Visuals are very dark. And though the film is in color, tints are muted, which conveys a nostalgic, sentimental mood. The thin plot takes place largely at night. And the plot alternates with dark interior scenes at the Hey Hey Club, a risqué, all-Black speakeasy where an all-Black band jives free-form jazz, and where illegal gambling fills the back rooms.None of the characters are sympathetic. But I don't think they're supposed to be. They're archetypes, models of desperate people in desperate times. A gun-wielding gangster's girl named Blondie (Jennifer Jason Leigh) wants to be like Jean Harlow. Mrs. Stilton (Miranda Richardson) is a wealthy, spaced-out politician's wife. Seldom Seen (based on a real-life person and played by Harry Belafonte) is the cigar smoking godfather who rules the dark, smoky Hey Hey Club with an iron fist and who likes to stand around giving lectures to people.The script's dialogue is mostly subtext, with message directed less at other characters than at viewers. And, as in other Altman films, then-current politics dance around the edges of the seedy story. The overall tone mixes depression with desperation.For me this is an easy film to judge. The characters and plot I cared for not at all. Jennifer Jason Leigh was painful to watch. And though the jazz is performed with great competence, its free-form, improvisational style is too contemporary to reflect the 1930s. On the other hand, Miranda Richardson gives a fine performance. Attention to detail in costumes, sets, props, and storefront exteriors make the film come alive with era realism. And lighting is absolutely terrific.If you go into this movie expecting a deep story and well-constructed plot, you'll be disappointed. Absorb the overall texture of the film's visuals. "Kansas City" is a terrific visual portrait of a specific place at a specific time.

bobsgrock Robert Altman's Kansas City is not a terrible movie by any stretch of the imagination and for any other director it would be a minor triumph. Yet, given the pedigree he has provided for himself, particularly with films such as MASH, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Nashville and 3 Women on his resume, I hold his films to a higher order than most.Perhaps for that reason most of all, I was quite disappointed by this outcome. Jennifer Jason Leigh and Miranda Richardson star as small-time hoodlum and rich politician's wives, respectively, with Leigh taking Richardson hostage in hope that her husband will be released by the notorious gangster Seldom Seen. However, all this is simply a contrivance for what Altman is really after, which seems to me to be the context and feeling of the city of Kansas City in the 1930s when Jean Harlow movies played in the local cinemas and voting was a high-stakes gamble that if gone wrong had very serious consequences.In terms of the film itself, I would consider this film to suffer from the Hudsucker Proxy syndrome: it looks fantastic with the sets and costumes all perfectly realizing the era in which it attempts to capture. Yet, the story is almost thrown together with really not attempt to clarify or make known exactly what is happening. I understand this is Altman's style, particularly for this film, but in order to string the movie along and maintain audience interest, it certainly would have helped to include a more cohesive story line. Also, Jennifer Jason Leigh doesn't fit this part in my opinion, coming off more annoying and self-conscious than sympathetic and interestingly quirky. Her dialogue and delivery seem to come right out of the 1990s and have almost no place in the setting of the rest of the characters.I admire Altman as a director too much to call this film a disaster but it is by far the weakest of all his films I have seen and makes me question why he decided to make this film. Perhaps because he grew up in Kansas City in the 1930s or he felt interested in gangsters, jazz and the setting of a growing town prior to World War II. Whatever the reason, I was frequently out of touch with the story and can really give no compelling reason to seek it out as one of Altman's finer works.

tedg I am an unabashed admirer of the personal in film. I suppose cinematic personality can be expressed in a variety of ways, but I value it most when its from a filmmaker, and it affects the cinematic vocabulary. I like Altman. Yes, I like certain films of his: these stand on their own outside of the long term dialog I've had with him.But I like the dialog as well, that long languid experience of punctuated experiments in his worlds and then mine.What he does, where his core experiments are rooted is in the rhythm of how he puts his films together. Its unlike anything else that could be considered competently relevant in film. His interest is in the notion of discovered pace.To understand why this is so weird, and sometimes so unsettling, you have to understand that there are very strict conventions in the business about what viewers will accept in terms of the pace, arc and rhythm of a film. Editors and filmmakers learn these conventions either through understanding the theory, through intuition or experience, depending on their approach. Its very, very narrow, what these allow.Regular readers of my comment know I believe that TeeVee is one of the worst evils we face. It is because it forces this vocabulary to be ever more narrow, constriction the visual imagination of a whole planet.Altman is a sort of Moses in this environment, trying every escape he can imagine. He tries to let actors surprise the camaraman and editor. He tries strange overlaps in scenes. He tries all sorts of parallel narratives. He particularly likes to juggle several layers of the narrative at once with contradictory, even warring cadences.Here what he does is work with three rhythms. The first is the obvious one, jazz, and particularly the style originating in Kansas City.The style can be directly attributable to the type of political corruption that dominated the town, extreme even when compared to Chicago and St Louis. The corruption is based on a sort of lie that pretends to be the truth but is bent. You can see it here in the voting. In Chicago at this time there would be no pretense: dead people's ballots would simply appear in the ballot box without the show of hiring bodies to cast them. Blacks would simply be ignored at best without the church performing nominal help (and then lynching). (This church-influenced near-truth politics still dominates the town, even famously to the court system. You do not want a trial in Kansas City.)So we have the jazz playing, and influencing the action while political power and "helping" a 14 year old pregnant black girl are suspended. Its a particular trading of phrases that if you listen you can see reflected in the structure: particularly the twisted flash-forwards of the narrative arrangement.Then you have the characters of the two women, each with their own world-rhythms. The character played by Jason Leigh is typical of what she can do personality-wise. Here it actually matters because of the way she pushes the future with the way she shapes words with an aggressive mouth. There's much to say here in the story about how this is folded into a similar character-induced pacing devised by Jean Harlow, who Leigh's character emulates. Harlow was in fact from Kansas City and her style was self-consciously KC jazz- influenced.The other character is played by Miranda Richardson, who (unlike her sister) had at the time a reputation for stiff English types. Here she plays something like that, one of those third generation frontier types with corn aristocracy, now turned vapid from drugs. Its a pretty layered performance, every big as complex as Leigh's. She also has a sort of nonlinear time based on rewriting and scrambling.Its an amazing construction, a thrilling experiment. By design, it lacks the sort of pace you come to expect. That's the point. Anyone who complains that it doesn't do well pacewise, just doesn't get it and if they were in the movie, would be disemboweled and then shot by a bullet through your girlfriend.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

woogaboo I was an extra in the film and it was an illuminating experience. We shot the Union Station scenes in 98 degree heat (no AC) and in winter costumes! I was wearing a wool dress, real silk stockings, leather heels and a BEAVER coat! Oh yes, and I was 6 months pregnant! Despite the sweat involved, it was a blast and I am glad I had the experience. Not only was I paid to be in a film, but the caterer was fabulous, the people were very interesting, and it's cool that I can see myself on the screen. I would let my kids see it, but 90% of the movie isn't exactly kid- friendly! I was sorry to hear of Mr. Altman's death - he was one in a trillion. Glad so many people enjoyed the film...