Two death-row murderesses develop a fierce rivalry while competing for publicity, celebrity, and a sleazy lawyer’s attention.
While no pun is intended, director Rob Marshall cleverly produces this musical masterpiece about beautiful and talented showgirls who just happened to have committed murder! In this new 20th Anniversary Limited-Edition Blu-ray™ SteelBook, based on the 2002 Film, Marshall beautifully showcases incredibly talented and gorgeous women who have landed behind bars while still pursuing their quests for stardom. While their careers have had ebbs and flows, their prison sentences have collectively enhanced their ability to charm the masses with the help of prison honcho, Matron “Mama” Morton (Queen Latifah) and famed lawyer Billy Flynn (Richard Gere).
As the film opens, Roxie Hart (Renee Zellweger), who is married, finds herself in a heated argument with her furniture-salesman lover, Fred Casely (Dominic West), who has reneged on a promise to put in a word for her at a local bar to boost her showbiz career. Not only does he tell her that he had no intention of doing so, but he also informs her that she will never amount to anything and that he only gave her that line to get in her pants. In a fit of rage, Roxie shoots and kills Fred, and when her husband Amos (John C. Reilly) arrives home, she convinces him to lie and say that he killed Fred in self-defense. Once the police start questioning them and find holes in the story, Amos changes his mind about being an alibi, and Roxie ends up in the slammer where she is greeted by Mama Morton and a host of other theatrical wannabes including Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones), one of her fiercest showgirl rivals. While the two leading ladies seem to resent one another at first, Mama Morton advises that they should work together on their comebacks since neither one has the wherewithal to stay in the spotlight on her own. In addition, Mama Morton, who is used to providing favors for the prisoners for a misappropriated fee, introduces Roxie to famed Lawyer Billy Flynn (Richard Gere), who has yet to lose a case and who has his own recipe for strategizing with the women and whoever else he can bamboozle, for getting what he wants and maintain his legendary status.
While Billy and Roxie hang out on many occasions to come up with a strategy for her case, Velma’s jealousy keeps her in a revolving position of envy, and Amos, who has been left in the dust repeatedly, is recruited to help secure Roxie’s freedom as he is still emotionally hanging on to her every whim. The film intensifies as the character Kitty Baxter (Lucy Liu) joins the prison headcount, and Mama Morton’s roster of recruits continues to build her pocketbook to sizeable proportions as the females tear each other down and build each other up while remaining highly entertaining and continuing to showcase their unique talents outside of killing the men in their lives. In the end, Billy Flynn once again establishes bragging rights over winning cases while the two rivals, Roxie and Velma, realize that they are better together as Chicago’s finest showgirls, and Mama Morton prepares to greet her next set of inductees into her cache of killer showgirls.
Now available on a new 20th Anniversary Limited-Edition Blu-ray™ SteelBook™
