Chicago By: Henry Seyue

Director: Bill London
Starring: Renee Zellweger (Roxie Hart), Catherine Zeta-Jones (Velma Kelly), Queen Latifa (Matron Mama Morton) , and Richard Gere (Billy Flynn)
Producer Circle co., 2002

The Twenties are roaring in the Windy City, and Roxie Hart wants a piece of the action. Lights, live music, skimpy costumes and lots of background dancers: she has her sights set on stardom and she’d give anything to be like beautiful Jazz songstress Velma Kelly and see her name on the local marquee. She knows that her marriage to dopey, sweet, un-enthralling Amos won’t be her ticket to fame and fortune so she starts "fooling around" with other men. Fooling around leads to "screwing around" with Fred Casely, who says he’s got connections down at the Jazz club. Then she discovers that the only kind of connections on Fred’s mind happen between bed sheets, and she kills him off with her husband’s pistol. Ironically, she finds herself on death row at the women’s prison right next to the great Ms. Kelly, who has recently murdered her own husband and sister after catching them in an affair. The film provides a variety of positive elements, spiritual content, violent content and negative content which all add up to be the Oscar worthy formula that has made Chicago  one of the most revered musicals in Academy Award history.

In terms of the films positive element, through the media frenzy that Billy Flynn whips up, Chicago satirizes the ability of journalists to sway public opinion, tugging heartstrings and overshadowing the truth. The slick lawyer truly believes, "It’s all a three-ring circus—these trials, the whole world. It’s all show business." To sarcastically prove this point, one of my favorite musical numbers features Flynn as puppet master for a chorus of reporters, putting words in their mouths and telling the public exactly what he wants them to believe. Another musical interlude shows him tap dancing his way into the minds of the jury, not allowing them to think, but whipping them up emotionally until they’re eating out of his hand. At the height of the fame he creates for Roxie, one reporter announces, "She’s the sweetest little girl ever accused of murder in Chicago. Women want to look like her. Men want to date her. And little girls even want to take her home [in the form of a doll]." Though Flynn’s dog and pony show is overdone and unrealistic, the message is clear that our society allows the news media far too much control over our ideas about truth. It’s also easy to see that famous people are often admired and imitated just because they’re famous, and not because they’re worth emulating.

As far as the films spiritual and violent content goes, Roxie seems to have been raised catholic yet offers up half-serious prayers and directs flippant appeals to "Jesus, Mary and Joseph." A couple of times, Flynn stops her and tells her to trust in him instead. Flynn arrogantly proclaims, "If Jesus had lived in Chicago today, and if he came to me with $5,000, well, things would have turned out differently." When Roxie supposes aloud that her best bet is to tell the jury the truth, Flynn says, "The truth is a one-way ticket to the death house." This film is also one that Idealizes violence or at least puts it in a not-so negative light.  Although the crimes are stylized and not portrayed graphically (some are not shown at all), this movie is about murders and the women who commit them. Onstage, Roxie and Velma use fake Tommy guns to draw oohs and aahhs from the crowd. Offstage, Fred is shown shoving Roxie in the bedroom. She shoots him pointblank three times with a pistol. "Six Merry Murderesses" in the jail perform a whole number about how they killed their husbands or lovers. The theme of the song is, yeah, I did it, but it wasn’t wrong. ("He had it coming. ... If you’da been there, I bet you would’a done the same.") 

One female murderer is hanged onscreen [Was Hunyak actually a murderer?]. And Roxie’s crime is clearly the source of her notoriety. When she dreams of having her own vaudeville act after she gets out of prison, Flynn tells her that killing Fred is what will attract people to her show. "That’s all the audience wants to say—that they saw someone famous." Despite all this, the script also makes a point about how desensitized our culture is to violence. Roxie has to work hard to stay in the spotlight, since other women are killing their husbands and threatening to steal her fame. We see one other lady kill her husband and two women she finds in bed with him. Near the end of the film, an onlooker asks, "Roxie Hart. Didn’t she kill a guy a while back?" which she responds, "Ah, who can keep ‘em straight anymore?"

To conclude, this is certainly one of the more watchable musicals I've come across in my day. Sonically it may not be as pleasing as a film like Grease, but it still delivers pretty well and has more substance than a film like Grease. I liken this film to La La Land because I think they are very similar in the search for stardom that they both depict, I however think that La La Land was a lot more visually pleasing; however, it must be added that Chicago did what it could with the technology of the time. Again, in comparison to a film like La La Land I think Chicago wins in substance, the plot is seriously more thought out and the message is a lot easier to buy into subjectively speaking. It combines sex, violence, spirituality, law, positivity and negativity into a single story told through song. Overall I would give this film a a strong 7.8/10 with its biggest strength being either character development or plot, and its biggest weakness being is its songs.