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06/24/06
Kansas City (1996)
56
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:32
Fresh:18
Rotten:14
Average Rating:5.9/10
Runtime: 1 hr 55 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Robert Altman's hometown gets the director's signature treatment in this jazz-infused mobster tale set in the 1930s. KANSAS CITY takes place in the jazz-drenched, depression-era milieu of the... [More]
Starring: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Miranda Richardson, Harry Belafonte, Michael Murphy
Director: Robert Altman
Reviews for Kansas City
Top CriticClick to read the article
01/01/00
Top CriticRobert Altman brings us an effective, if minor, crime film filled with the jazz sounds of Count Basie and Lester Young.
05/26/06
Although the movie contains occasional moments of glimpsed accomplishment, Kansas City is for the most part a lame duck.
01/01/00
A sadly ordinary motion picture, and, in less sure hands, it might have been something of an unfortunate mess. Even with Altman at the helm, however, it manages to be singularly unremarkable.
01/01/00
Another spunky film in a series of Robert Altman portraits of the failure of the American Dream.
08/27/02
All of the characters act as if somebody might come along someday and make a movie about them. And Altman, who made the movie, gets his chance to sit in at last on one of those cutting sessions.
01/01/00
Top CriticIt'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.
01/01/00
Would someone throw a net over Jennifer Jason Leigh? She's at it again.
01/01/00
Music fans can bask in the tunes that continue to play out when the action gets sluggish.
01/01/00
[It] has its own brawling vitality.
01/01/00
Top CriticThis is the most intriguing Altman film in quite a while.
01/01/00
A minor work in Altman's oeuvre that can't bridge the gap between its larger issues--sharp inequality, American political process--and the two women at its center that are not interesting as characters or actresses (Jason Leigh and Miranda Richardson)
09/21/07
Let's just say that if you find it arbitrary and more an expression of Altman's feelings about class than the outcome of his story, then we are in agreement.
01/01/00
Altman tries to make this really dull, boring, and simple story into something that is unique, exciting, and intricate -- all of which he fails at miserably
01/01/00
I only hope audiences are willing to trust Altman the risk-taker as long as it takes.
01/01/00
Robert Altman is perhaps the most unreliable of the great directors.
01/01/00
Altman looks back at his hometown in an unsentimental, hard-nosed way.
02/04/06
It could never for an instant be mistaken for anything but a Robert Altman film, and that counts for a lot.
02/14/01
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