September 5–12, 1996

movie shorts

KANSAS CITY

Harry Belafonte is Seldom Seen, a gangster in 1934 Kansas City who must decide what to do with Johnny O' Hara (Dermot Mulroney) after he tries to rob one of Seen's wealthy gambling clients. Johnny's wife Blondie (Jennifer Jason Leigh) kidnaps Carolyn (Miranda Richardson), the wife of an advisor to FDR, in hopes that Carolyn's husband will ante up some money or clout or both for Carolyn's release. The result is an old-school Robert Altman movie, deliberately paced and structured, so that characters and plots seem to unravel more than they develop. Which doesn't mean the movie is perfect. Some characters and metaphors are overstated. (Leigh, for example, is all over this ballsy '30s dame clich, with slouchy stand, grating voice and jutting jaw, but she does seem to crowd the frame.) And Belafonte isn't on the screen enough. But it's an unusual film, one that doesn't lay out every turn before you get there, and for the most part it doesn't simplify its characters or the questions they raise.

— Cindy Fuchs

(Ritz Five)