Rent Kansas City (1996)

A Jazzed Up Tale of 1930s Kansas Underworld... - Kansas City review by Strovey

Altman’s Kanas City is almost as much about jazz music as it is about low-life and high-life gangsters in the mid-30s USA. Dumped on top of some rather excellent jazz played by top jazz musicians of the time (1990s) is a wafer-thin plot, simply a man robs the wrong man, gets captured and knows he is going to be ‘fed to the dogs’, as his wife does, so his wife kidnaps the wife of a powerful and influential politician to get him released. It’s not such a good move as she thinks. That’s it.

In this story there are no heroes, no one you would throw your lot in with but that is fair. We are plunged into a world of backroom gambling drinking dens, election fiddling for corrupt politicians and out-and-out gangsters. Too many films and TV shows these days somehow make out these types are heroes. Look how many people actually walk around dressed up like ‘Peaky Blinders’, horrible swine from the 1920s in Birmingham, it’s like dressing up like Harold Shipman or something. So showing this world as seedy and grim is okay with me.

Blondie, played a bit too cartoon-like for me by Jennifer Jason Leigh, struts around like a 1930s film gangster moll, admires Jean Harlow and believes she should do whatever her husband Johnny says or does. Miranda Richardson plays Mrs. Stilton in a much more nuanced and subtle way, she is wealthy, spoilt and swimming in laudanum, Harry Belafonte completes the main triumvirate with a fine menacing display as Seldom Seen the vicious crime boss who owns the Hey-Hey club, people will live and die on his word. All in all, no one you would like to spend any time with in real life and in general played very well by the actors. This grounds the story in some semblance of reality and makes most of the actions and story beats seem realistic.

Dermot Mulroney is not used as much as he could be as the catalyst for the whole story and says no lines for the early parts of the film. When he does, ill-found confidence oozes out of him, it is a shame as it might have been more interesting to invest some story time with Johnny, as Mulroney convinces with his few lines.

Steve Buscemi pops up this time playing ‘horrible’ and with such a versatile and talented actor his horrible is as good as his nice and funny, you can see the ability in only this short cameo.

Altman’s window into this part of American history clearly sees a dark, seedy, and desperate world where power, corruption and violence are the only things that seem to matter.

The more the film goes along the more you feel that overall the film is more about atmosphere, a feeling, rather than a tight and engrossing story. I have read that the jazz music is too contemporary for the period being depicted but this point aside it is the very lifeblood of the film and you cannot help feeling that Altman was more interested, invested, in the jazz than any other part of the film.

From my limited knowledge, the period had been reconstructed accurately with costumes, cars and buildings not looking out of place only Jason Leigh’s portrayal of Blondie jarred with me but I settled into the film and let her 'caricature' her way through the scenes without ruining it for me. Others of you may not be so forgiving.

Altman is always a film-maker worth watching so Kansas City is a solid bet. Could it have been a better more engrossing period gangster film? Yes but this does not detract from what you see and if you love jazz it is well worth a watch.