Kansas City (1996)

Kino

Love the Hard Way

Film.com's FREE movie of the week is "Love the Hard Way." Oscar-winner Adrien Brody and Charlotte Ayanna star in this drama about a thief who falls for a curious, beautiful young woman. As their intimacy grows, a slick cop (Pam Greer) is closing in.

Rating: R

Release Date: Aug 16, 1996

Running Time: 115 mins.

Country Of Origin: United States

starring: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Miranda Richardson, Harry Belafonte, Michael Murphy, Dermot Mulroney, Steve Buscemi, Brooke Smith, Jane Adams, Jeff Feringa, A C Tony Smith

director: Robert Altman

In 1934, while the rest of the country was mired in the Depression, Kansas City thrived with gambling, prostitution, and jazz-filled nightclubs flourishing under the rule of city bosses and organized crime. On the eve of the municipal elections, a scrappy telegraph operator, Blondie O'Hara, has kidnapped wealthy Carolyn Stilton, a drug-addicted socialite wife married to an advisor to president Roosevelt. Blondie plans to swap Carolyn for her small-time gangster husband Johnnie who has been taken hostage by big-time gangster and club owner Seldom Seen. Robert Altman's riff on race, class, and power cross-cuts between the two kidnappings and the background of corrupt politics and virtuoso jazz music.

December 8, 2000

Jazz lovers, rejoice. Robert Altman's hypnotic riff on his hell-raising, whoremongering, crime-ridden Missouri hometown during the Depression is brimming over with vibrant, vital music. Like the young Charlie Parker played by Albert J. Burnes in the movie, Altman used to sneak into the jazz clubs on 18th and Vine to hear the sounds of Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Bennie Moten. The director gathered 21 jazz greats -- veterans and newcomers -- to catch the period spirit. He re-enacts a jam…