Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
Murderesses Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart find themselves on death row together and fight for the fame that will keep them from the gallows in 1920s Chicago.
Chicago is a slick, stylish adaptation of the stage musical that earned its Best Picture win on the strength of exceptional performances—Renée Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Richard Gere all commit fully, with Zeta-Jones in particular delivering a standout turn. Rob Marshall's direction ingeniously stages musical numbers as fantasy sequences, and the cinematography and editing are kinetic and visually inventive, giving the film a genuinely distinctive look. The plot, however, is fairly thin even by musical standards—a cynical satire of celebrity and justice that doesn't dig especially deep—and the ending, while thematically consistent, resolves in a breezy, slightly hollow way that undercuts the satire's edge. Novelty is moderate: the film revitalized the Hollywood musical genre and its staging conceits are clever, but it remains a faithful adaptation of well-known source material rather than a truly singular cinematic vision.