Steve Martin Movie:

		List Price: $67.97		Label: Pid Salesrank: 202724 Released: July 10, 2001
		MPAA Rating: R (Restricted) Media: DVD

Editorial Review:
Asian only NTSC / ALL CODE DVD. Directed & Co-Written by Robert Altman (The Player, Ready To Wear). Starring Jennifer Jason Leigh, Miranda Richardson, Harry Belafonte & Steve Buscemi. For his 31st film, director Robert Altman revisits his birthplace, Kansas City, at the peak of its vitality in 1934. Located at the crossroads of America, Kansas City thrived under the rule of city bosses and organized crime. Gambling and prostitution were officially illegal, but freely available; and a new kind of jazz played 'round the clock in the raucous clubs around 18th and Vine. While the rest of the country was mired in the Great Depression, Kansas City not only prospered, it swung. The action in KANSAS CITY occurs over the course of two days in 1934, on the eve of municipal elections. The Democratic political machine of boss Tom Pendergast gears up to get out the votes, using violence when necessary. Virtuoso jazz musicians match musical wits in all-night 'cutting contests' at the Hey Hey Club. And scrappy Blondie O'Hara, portrayed by Jennifer Jason Leigh, simulating the tough-talking broads of her silver screen idol, Jean Harlow, kidnaps wealthy Carolyn Stilton (Miranda Richardson), the laudanum-addicted wife of an advisor to President Roosevelt. Blondie's plan is to swap Carolyn for her small-time gangster husband Johnny O'Hara (Dermot Mulroney), who has been captured by big-time gangster, killer and club-owner Seldom Seen (Harry Belafonte). Johnny has affronted Seldom by robbing one of the kingpin's wealthy gambling customers; worse, he has infuriated Seldom by committing the crime in blackface. Johnny is being held in the basement of Seldom's Hey Hey Club, where the music-loving gangster moves to the jam session going on upstairs. While Seldom considers just how to dispose of Johnny O'Hara, Blondie O'Hara carts her captive, the genteel, opiated Carolyn Stilton, all over Kansas City. Once she tracks down Henry Stilton (Michael Murphy) and gives him the terms of his wife's ransom, Blondie must keep Carolyn out of sight. Inseparable for two days, these two very different women begin to understand one another as they head towards an inevitable, transforming conclusion. KANSAS CITY contrasts the emotions provoked by the film's dual kidnappings with the exhilarating jazz of the all-night jam sessions, while being surrounded by the beauty, violence and joy of a unique time in American history. A cinematic riff on race, class, power and addiction, Altman calls KANSAS CITY 'a jazz memory.' ** Please note this DVD carries un-removable / burned-in Chinese subtitles.

Description of Kansas City [IMPORT]:
Robert Altman wanted to captured a sense of what life was like in his hometown during the Depression, both in a story about the people who lived there and, more impressionistically, in the jazz that sprouted there before moving to New York. But his plot here is rambling and undramatic: A small-time hood double-crosses a vicious black gangster (Harry Belafonte) and is grabbed by him, marked for death. To save his life, the hood's dim blond wife (Jennifer Jason Leigh) kidnaps a rich politician's wife (Miranda Richardson) and spends the day driving around town with her, on the theory that the politician can convince the gangster to free her husband. Leigh is jittery, Richardson seems bored--and the lengthy jam sessions we see (involving contemporary musicians such as Joshua Redman) serve only to prolong an already slow-moving film. Possibly worth seeing for the silky menace of Belafonte, but there is little else to recommend it. --Marshall Fine

Kansas City [IMPORT] Reviews:
Kansas CIty
2009-09-14 - This movie proceeds at a pace similar to that of a sultry summer day in Kansas City, slow and meandering. A woman's husband falls in with oganized crime and to get him back she kidnaps the wife of a politician. The problem is she can't seem to plan beyond the next five minutes. She really should have thanked the gangsters for taking her husband then used the opportunity to get a real life, but she fashions herself and him as Bonnie and Clyde wannabes.

The movie uses Kansas City blues music to transition from scene to scene, which is very well played, but adds little but annoyance to the progress of the film. The characters meander through scenes without much emotion leading the viewer to wish the whole film could be fast forwarded to the next scene.

The setting is the Great Depression, but other than the motly crew of voters brought in to rig a local election, no one seems to be suffering from economic distress. All of the cars appear to be brand new and the buildings are neat and tidy. No signs of poverty are anywhere to be seen. In the end the husband and wife get their just rewards and the film comes to a merciful close. The viewer is left asking what was the point of this whole thing?

Saxophone Players
2007-11-05 -
The music in this movie is great! Joshua Redman tears it up with his great old/new style of playing the saxophone!!

Doug Earley

Don't waste your time
2007-08-31 - If you're looking for drama, suspense or anything approaching a real plot, look elsewhere. Not only is the ending predictable, but you'll have to wait through a very long and boring movie to see it. Atmosphere is about all you'll get. Depending on your opinion of jazz or what passes for it in this movie, you may be in for further disappointment. We rented it on line through U-Verse and I'm going to ask for a refund. Belafonte was the only one who was convincing and that's because he wasn't acting.

The Battle Of Kansas City Jazz Or The Deception Of Beauty
2005-12-30 - When one listens to the gorgeous music of Lester Young, Charlie Parker(I think he was "shown" in a scene as well) and Coleman Hawkins and William Count Basie,a jazz fan is left with a sense of wonder what must have gone down at KC in those days...Now we have a great depiction of the music and what life might have been like with great music revisited and performed by these "new giants of jazz" recreating the high swinging good time sense of euphoria sweeping those magical tunes..
Yet, at the same time, music lovers see the battle going on between the somewhat bluesier, aggressive playing of the giant Coleman Hawkins contrasted clearly with his major rival Lester Young, the more sweeter melancholy player..These 2 contrasting visions play-out throughout the entire movie not only as a backdrop as a soundtrack but a portrayal of the contradictory lives played by it's characters.
There is no difference between the Downtown KC of crime, brothels and booze(opium and cocaine as well) with it's underworld in contrast to the Americana of the Uptown KC with it's quaint Democratic lifestyle untouched by the jazz going down at the Hey-Hey Club...ultimately leading to murder from all sides.
This is a powerful message and why the movie scores big besides the wonderful music and the 2 Cd's spurned out which are equally impressive.
The moral equivalency of these 2 worlds makes this movie a great one.


Atmosphere and little else.
2005-09-19 - Even the mighty have their moments when they stumble and KANSAS CITY is one of those moments for maverick director Robert Altman. There's little more than atmosphere in this film; the period-recreation of 1935-ish Kansas City Missouri, the great jazz throughout every frame and a bravura performance by Harry Belefonte as a gambler/crime kingpin named "Seldom Seen" don't mask the fact that the plot's thinner than newspaper and that every other actor save Belefonte is chewing the scenery and burping after every chew. On the surface, this movie's approach isn't much different from Altman's others--there's constant activity, so much that it's initially disorienting to try and figure out all of the threads of the story, but in many of his films (NASHVILLE, MASH and GOSFORD PARK, for instance), those threads gradually come together into a whole. It never happens in KANSAS CITY. The threads stay threads and you're left with a jumble, albiet a jumble with a great score.