KANSAS CITY
A film review by Alexander F. Relyea
Copyright 1996 Alexander F. Relyea
There are two ways to view Robert Altman's KANSAS CITY. It can be seen as either a politically motivated kidnapping with a jazz backdrop or a movie about Kansas City jazz in the 1930s with a little local color. This is unfortunate, because neither story is done particularly well. Any number of context clues in the film tell the observant viewer that KANSAS CITY takes place on the first Monday and Tuesday of November, 1933, a month before prohibition was repealed. Nevertheless, the alcohol is free-flowing in one of the many historical inconsistencies in the film. The most obvious of these are the fact that KANSAS CITY has exactly zero homeless people, and that all of the "colored" people are very wealthy; even the Western Union custodian is well-off.
KANSAS CITY stars Jennifer Jason Leigh (GEORGIA) as Blondie, a telegraph operator who kidnaps Miranda Richardson (THE CRYING GAME), the wife of a powerful local politician, in order to convince some colored gangsters, led by Harry Belafonte (WHITE MAN'S BURDEN), to release her husband Johnny (Dermot Mulroney, THE TRIGGER EFFECT). A nearly incomprehensible sequence of flashbacks helps Blondie explain her dilemma to Mrs. Stilton (Richardson). Apparently Johnny had conspired with a cabbie with the unfortunate name of Blue Green (played by an actor with the even more unfortunate name of Martin Martin) to rob a rich black gambler. They get caught, and Blondie goes down to Belafonte's club to try to get him back. She gets turned away and goes to kidnap Mrs. Stilton and win Johnny's freedom. Those who can follow this sequence are rewarded with the unfolding of Blondie's desperate caper as she drags poor Mrs. Stilton around Kansas City almost haphazardly. These images are inter-cut with laughable scenes of Belafonte trying in vain to act tough and scenes of the twenty-four-hour jazz band that plays at his club. The jazz is nice, and it is featured in about ninety percent of the scenes, either as background music, or as the focus of the scene, but it is hardly something to base a movie on, and Altman doesn't bother to give any background information that would provide a solid foundation. He doesn't develop the characters of any of the musicians except for a high school saxophonist who appears to have nothing better to do than watch the band in twelve hour stretches. KANSAS CITY plods on with plot twists that tend to be inconsequential or too confusing to follow to extend it to its full length of a hundred ten minutes, and then has a gutless ending. When one of the characters says "You know what I did today? I forgot to vote.", we can sympathize, for it is hard to remember anything more important happening in the film.
On the whole, the acting was solid. Mulroney stands out as a small time hood unable to fully realize that he has entered the big leagues. Leigh is solid, if a little annoying. Belafonte does his best, but he comes across as more of a retired gangster, and is best when he relates his old war stories. He is sadly miscast. Richardson takes Mrs. Stilton's opium habit and plays the stock character of "Drug addict". Scarcely a scene goes by when she doesn't dope up and stagger. Surely a woman this addicted had professional help, even in the Great Depression. Other than that, the movie seems to depend on gratuitous violence and nudity, as well as introducing characters who are almost completely irrelevant to the plot. Steve Buscemi (FARGO) is an excellent example of this, as in his two scenes he is rough with his wife and beating some guy with a baseball bat, both for no apparent reason. Before long, anyone watching KANSAS CITY is going to wish for something to happen either to return to the jazz or to end the film. It is curious why Altman calls his film KANSAS CITY since it could take place in any city large enough to have a jazz club. There is no discernible local flavor, and we only know that it is Kansas City because characters say so. The screenplay and direction conspire to make KANSAS CITY too confusing and remote to cause any feelings towards any of the characters, and I am not really sure what Altman intended to do with this film. Nevertheless, Mulroney and Leigh's performances and the wonderful soundtrack make this film worth ** out of ****.
-- Alex Relyea SMU Box 2575 relyea@seas.smu.edu Dallas, TX 75275-2575 frelyea@power.cis.smu.edu Chair of SMU Student Branch of IEEE 2 John 12
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