Kansas City (1996)

Director
Robert Altman

Main cast
Jennifer Jason Leigh; Miranda Richardson; Harry Belafonte; Michael Murphy; Dermot Mulroney

Genres
Thriller, Drama, Music, Crime

Description
Robert Altman's story is a riff on race, class, and power cross-cuts between the two kidnappings and the background of corrupt politics and virtuoso jazz music. It all takes place in Kansas City in 1934.


Similar movies

A musical set in the Prohibition-era American South, where a speakeasy performer and club manager Rooster must contend with gangsters who have their eyes on the club while his piano player and partner Percival must choose between his love, Angel or his obligations to his father.
A down-on-his-luck ex-GI finds himself framed for an armored car robbery. When he's finally released for lack of evidence--after having been beaten up and tortured by the police--he sets out to discover who set him up, and why. The trail leads him into Mexico and a web of hired killers and corrupt cops.
The life of American public enemy number one who was shot by the police in 1934.
During the campaign for reelection, the crooked politician Paul Madvig decides to clean up his past, refusing the support of the gangster Nick Varna and associating to the respectable reformist politician Ralph Henry. When Ralph's son, Taylor Henry, a gambler and the lover of Paul's sister Opal, is murdered, Paul's right arm, Ed Beaumont, finds his body on the street. Nick uses the financial situation of The Observer to force the publisher Clyde Matthews to use the newspaper to raise the suspicion that Paul Madvig might have killed Taylor.
A shady lawyer attempts a Christmas Eve crime, hoping to swindle the local mob out of some money. But his partner, a strip club owner, might have different plans for the cash.
Sharky gets busted back to working vice, where he happens upon a scandalous conspiracy involving a local politician. Accompanied by an all-star jazz soundtrack, Sharky's new "machine" gathers evidence while Sharky falls in love with a woman he has never met.
Hardened criminal Maggie Hayward's consistent violence, even in police custody, ends in the execution chamber. However, top-secret US government agent 'Bob' arranges a staged death, so Maggie can be elaborately trained as a phantom killer and subdued into obedience. She gets a new cover identity as saleswoman Claudia Anne Doran. She also gets a wonderful house-mate, building super J.P., a broad-minded, gentle photographer. The two fall in love, and that complicates hit jobs. His good influence extends to breeding in her a conscience that places love over business, unlike Bob's agency.
Chris is a once promising high school athlete whose life is turned upside down following a tragic accident. As he tries to maintain a normal life, he takes a job as a janitor at a bank, where he ultimately finds himself caught up in a planned heist.
Harry Mitchell is a successful Los Angeles manufacturer whose wife is running for city council. His life is turned upside down when three blackmailers confront him with a video tape of him with his young mistress and demand $100,000. Fearing that the story will hurt his wife's political campaign if he goes to the police, Harry pretends that he will pay the men, but does not follow through.
Karsten Aslaksen, chief engineer of a large chemical company, disappears without trace. His married lover, a successful Christian politician named Vibeke Farang, approaches private investigator Varg Veum to track him down discreetly.
Rogue intelligence agents, right-wing politicians, greedy capitalists, and free-lance assassins plot and carry out the JFK assassination in this speculative agitprop.
Based on a real life group of con artists who pulled off clever robberies during 1980s. This group robbed famous businessmen and politicians by impersonating the CBI or Income tax officers and conducting raids.
Slevin is mistakenly put in the middle of a personal war between the city’s biggest criminal bosses. Under constant watch, Slevin must try not to get killed by an infamous assassin and come up with an idea of how to get out of his current dilemma. A film with many twists and turns.
After the death of his first wife, wealthy Raja Aditya Pratap Singh, re-marries another woman, simply known as Chhoti Rani, who subsequently becomes mentally unstable. His father's former mistress, Badi Rani, controls the wealth, while he himself has a mistress. Unable to procure contracts through Mantri Prabhu Tiwari, he decides to stand for elections, while his rival, Ghenda Singh, recruits an assassin, Babalu, who is also the nephew of Sunder, Chhoti Rani's chauffeur, to kill Aditya. After Sunder is unable to drive due to an injury, he recommends Babalu, and Aditya hires him. Babalu settles down in his new job, attempts to get accepted by everyone, including Chhoti Rani, who he finds attractive. He soon finds out that she, too, has feelings for him, and then starts making plans of not only carrying out his assigned task but also becoming the next Saheb.
Racial tension is running high in Bergen after a young black asylum seeker dies at the hands of the Police. Shortly afterwards, a right-wing politician is targeted by a gunman at a public rally and his wife is fatally wounded. Another member of the right-wing party, Marit Holm, approaches private investigator Varg Veum, insisting she is being stalked.
In a broken city rife with injustice, ex-cop Billy Taggart (Mark Wahlberg) seeks redemption and revenge after being double-crossed and then framed by its most powerful figure, the mayor (Russell Crowe). Billy's relentless pursuit of justice, matched only by his streetwise toughness, makes him an unstoppable force - and the mayor's worst nightmare.
A cab driver finds himself the hostage of an engaging contract killer as he makes his rounds from hit to hit during one night in LA. He must find a way to save both himself and one last victim.
Saxophone player Charlie Parker comes to New York in 1940. He is quickly noticed for his remarkable way of playing. He becomes a drug addict but his loving wife Chan tries to help him.
In 1950s Alabama, the owner of the Honeydripper juke joint finds his business dropping off and against his better judgment, hires a young electric guitarist in a last ditch effort to draw crowds during harvest time.
Ram Bowen and Eddie Cook are two expatriate jazz musicians living in Paris where, unlike America at the time, Jazz musicians are celebrated and racism is a non-issue. When they meet and fall in love with two young American girls, Lillian and Connie, who are vacationing in France, Ram and Eddie must decide whether they should move back to America with them, or stay in Paris for the freedom it allows them. Ram, who wants to be a serious composer, finds Paris more exciting than America and is reluctant to give up his music for a relationship, and Eddie wants to stay for the city's more tolerant racial atmosphere.
Childhood friends Tracy Lord and C.K. Dexter Haven got married and quickly divorced. Now Tracy is about to marry again, this time to a shrewd social-climbing businessman. Bing still loves her. Spy magazine blackmails Grace's family by threatening to reveal her playboy father's exploits if not allowed to cover the wedding.
Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench is about the often uneasy but always beautiful relationship between music and love. It tells the story of a young Boston jazz musician who drifts from affair to affair, his trumpet the only constant in his life. He makes a promising connection with an aimless introvert named Madeline, who immediately takes to his music. Their relationship is cut short, however, when Guy leaves her for another, more outgoing love interest. The two separated lovers slowly wind their way back into each other’s lives, through a series of romances and near-romances punctuated by song.
A jazz legend finds love and redemption when he stars in a movie about his own troubled life to mount a comeback.
Aimless youth Rick Martin learns he has a gift for music and falls in love with the trumpet. Legendary trumpeter Art Hazzard takes Rick under his wing and teaches him all he knows about playing. To the exclusion of anything else in life, Rick becomes a star trumpeter, but his volatile personality and desire to play jazz rather than the restricted tunes of the bands he works for lands him in trouble.
Members of a traveling jazz band try to keep their talented leader from dying after he breaks from the band and begins drinking and taking drugs.
After serving time for manslaughter, young Vince Everett becomes a teenage rock star.
This send-up of ragtime song and dance begins in 1915 San Francisco when society boy Roger Grant decides to pursue popular rather than serious music.
Richard Attenborough, Patrick McGoohan and a host of jazz legends including Charles Mingus and Dave Brubeck star in this 60s melodrama, inspired by Shakespeare's 'Othello'
The Jolson Story is a 1946 musical biography which purports to tell the life story of singer Al Jolson. It stars Larry Parks as Jolson, Evelyn Keyes as "Julie Benson" (approximating Jolson's wife, Ruby Keeler), William Demarest as his manager, Ludwig Donath and Tamara Shayne as his parents, and Scotty Beckett as the young Jolson.
Mia, an aspiring actress, serves lattes to movie stars in between auditions and Sebastian, a jazz musician, scrapes by playing cocktail party gigs in dingy bars, but as success mounts they are faced with decisions that begin to fray the fragile fabric of their love affair, and the dreams they worked so hard to maintain in each other threaten to rip them apart.
A Chicago mob enforcer is sent to Kansas City to settle a debt with a cattle rancher who not only grinds his enemies into sausage, but sells women as sex slaves.
In Cold Blood is a 1967 film based on Truman Capote's book of the same name. Richard Brooks prepared the adaptation and directed the film. Some scenes were filmed on the locations of the original events, in Garden City and Holcomb, Kansas including the Clutter residence, the site of the murders.
Capote is the biographical film about writer Truman Capote and his assignment for The New Yorker to write the non-fiction book In Cold Blood. Philip Seymour Hoffman won an Oscar for Best Actor for his portrayal of Capote.
During the Great Depression, a con man finds himself saddled with a young girl who may or may not be his daughter, and the two forge an unlikely partnership.
Toni Jo tries to break her husband, Cowboy, out of prison and becomes an instant sensation due to her beauty.
A drama-thriller centered on a democratic election within an organized crime society.
Michael (Ajay Devgan) , Arjun (Vivek Oberoi) and Lallan (Abhishek Bachchan) are three young men in Kolkata , with different ideals and objectives . Michael is an idealistic youth leader who dreams of a better India being created by the youth power . Arjun is a self-centered , opportunistic , easygoing fellow whose objective is to immigrate to a developed country and make big money . Lallan is a goon who works for Prosenjit Chatterjee (Om Puri) , an immoral politician . The lives of these three different people become intertwined following a murder attempt and an accident in broad daylight on the Hooghly bridge
When his peaceful life is threatened by a high-tech assassin, former black-ops agent Frank Moses reassembles his old team in a last ditch effort to survive and uncover his assailants.
A somewhat daffy book editor on a rail trip from Los Angeles to Chicago thinks that he sees a murdered man thrown from the train. When he can find no one who will believe him, he starts doing some investigating of his own. But all that accomplishes is to get the killer after him.
What happens when a person decides that life is merely a state of mind? If you're Betty, a small-town waitress and soap opera fan from Fair Oaks, Kansas, you refuse to believe that you can't be with the love of your life just because he doesn't really exist. After all, life is no excuse for not living. Traumatized by a savage event, Betty enters into a fugue state that allows -- even encourages -- her to keep functioning... in a kind of alternate reality.
A leftist professor wants the truth about two men killed during a hunting party; but the mafia, the Church and corrupt politicians don't want him to learn it.
Walter Weed is an unassuming desk jockey at the FBI when the Bureau uncovers a plot to assassinate him. A team of degenerate, psychotic assassins dispatched by mystery man Hal Leuco to win a huge bounty includes a resourceful beauty who has a unique method of killing her prey, a power-tool wielding psychopath and a deadly master of disguise.
A sheriff (Thornton) begins an investigation into the death of a local transsexual after hearing that high ranking politicians may have been involved. Although he is homophobic, his investigation causes him to be rejected by others, forcing him to seek help from the people he once despised.
Threats from sinister foreign nationals aren't the only thing to fear. Bedraggled college professor Michael Faraday has been vexed (and increasingly paranoid) since his wife's accidental death in a botched FBI operation. But all that takes a backseat when a seemingly all-American couple set up house next door.
A woman who survived the brutal killing of her family as a child is forced to confront the events of that day.
An air-traffic controller quits after a plane crash but, years later, goes to help an airport that is in the path of a terrible storm.
BLACKOUT takes you inside the personal journey of what went down and what it was really like in Brooklyn, NY on August 14. It examines the nature of man to take advantage of his own fellow man outside of normal conditions, in times of weakness and vulnerability
Slaking a thirst for dangerous games, Kathryn challenges her stepbrother, Sebastian, to deflower their headmaster's daughter before the summer ends. If he succeeds, the prize is the chance to bed Kathryn. But if he loses, Kathryn will claim his most prized possession.
The irreverent host of a political satire talk show decides to run for president. But his stunt to expose Washington corruption goes further than he expects when he actually wins the election. Meanwhile, a software engineer suspects that a computer glitch is responsible for his surprising victory … but will she speak up?
An angel under the thumb of a ruthless gangster is saved by a trumpet player down on his luck.
It is approaching an election in the UK when the leader of the Labour party, John Smith, suffers another in a line of heart attacks and dies. With the leadership campaign about to start the clear choice appears to be Gordon Brown, a stanch Scotsman. However Tony Blair is also beginning to appear more likely as he will appeal to Southern voters who would be turned off by Brown. Blair rings Brown to arrange a meeting to discuss which will go for the job. The film flashbacks to the start of their relationship, sharing an office in Westminster on their first seats.
A soldier recounts his relationship with a famous political prisoner attempting to overthrow their country's authoritarian government.
In the run-up to the 1972 elections, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward covers what seems to be a minor break-in at the Democratic Party National headquarters. He is surprised to find top lawyers already on the defense case, and the discovery of names and addresses of Republican fund organizers on the accused further arouses his suspicions. The editor of the Post is prepared to run with the story and assigns Woodward and Carl Bernstein to it. They find the trail leading higher and higher in the Republican Party, and eventually into the White House itself.
The story of an idealist's rise to power in the world of Louisiana politics and the corruption that leads to his ultimate downfall. Based on the1946 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel written by Robert Penn Warren.
A gang of young thieves flee Paris during the violent aftermath of a political election, only to hole up at an Inn run by neo-Nazis.
This movie is a political/espionage thriller, based on a real kidnapping incident of Korean politician, Kim Dae-Jun.
Martijn, an idealistic Dutch pianist, travels to Morocco to help start a food program for malnourished children. Within moments of his arrival, however, Martijn is abducted by a group of terrorists, injected with a debilitating drug, and imprisoned. Under threat of death, the young man engages in a mental chess match with Ahmat, trying to learn his captor's true objective and avoid a horrible fate
A teenage boy befriends a starlet who is having an affair with an ambitious mayor. As the elections are coming up, the mayor's wife wants him to get rid of his mistress. The starlet agrees to stop the affair on condition that the mayor help release her boyfriend from jail. The mayor does so, but wants the former jail-bird to kill his political rival.
Michael ‘Jay’ Cochran has just left the Navy after 12 years and he's not quite sure what he's going to do, except that he knows he wants a holiday. He decides to visit Tiburon Mendez, a powerful but shady Mexican businessman who he once flew to Alaska for a hunting trip. Arriving at the Mendez mansion in Mexico, he is immediately surprised by the beauty and youth of Mendez’s wife, Miryea.
As election time nears, current Triad chairman Lok (Simon Yam) faces competition from his godsons. At the same time, Jimmy (Louis Koo) looks to increase his business relations with mainland China.

© Valossa 2015–2024