Kansas City
With Jennifer Jason Leigh, Miranda Richardson, Harry Belafonte.
US, 1996, 35mm, color, 115 min.
Print source: HFA
The middle-aged housewife of a Kansas City legislator is kidnapped in the suburbs while a petty crook is held captive downtown by the nastiest thugs in the city. Politics, class conflict and pulp fiction all converge in Kansas City; yet Altman seems equally interested in simply documenting superlative jazz performances. This is not to suggest, of course, that the director was bored by the municipal subtexts stirred up by his sensational plot (after all, he was from Kansas City and devoted years to getting this production off the ground), but rather that his democratic approach to the narrative makes no fuss about emphasizing any particular facet of the local texture over another. In the central kidnapper-victim dynamic, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Miranda Richardson bat around time-killing conversation until a complex quasi friendship emerges; meanwhile, in a jazz club back room, Dermot Mulroney endures the Corleone-esque intimidations of Harry Belafonte as Michael Murphy’s high-profile vigilante pulls strings behind the scenes. The distinctive charm of Kansas City is in witnessing Altman orchestrate this three-strand, high-stakes time bomb without ever accelerating his typically leisurely tempo.
Part of film series
Screenings from this program
Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson
Vincent & Theo
Fool for Love
Prêt-à-porter
California Split
Thieves Like Us
A Perfect Couple
A Prairie Home Companion
O.C. and Stiggs
That Cold Day in the Park
Corn's-A-Poppin'
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
The Gingerbread Man
Dr. T and the Women
Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
