One of Altman's very best.

Can't believe this film is so overlooked and underrated. It's fantastic, from the performances (Jennifer Jason Leigh and Harry Belafonte are superb in particular, and Miranda Richardson gives the rare believable depiction of an opiate user) to the music that acts like sardonic commentary throughout (enough said -- the sax "battle" is superb) to the aptly jazzy, rhyming way the narrative is constructed (maybe this is what turned audiences off? Yet I feel like this is nowhere near Altman's most impenetrable picture). The so-called "hyperlink" style of the narrative is fascinating -- not as dense as Short Cuts, but with a similar kind of free-associative, call-and-response semiotic style to it, in which various linked parts accumulate and then coincidentally mirror and bounce off each other like in a dream.

And of course that ending, like an Altman-esque Chinatown, brings it all home in the most depressing and powerful way... though not without some Altman irony to leaven things a little. While a depressing film, it has a lighter touch to it that makes it far less so than Polanski's film.

I'd say Short Cuts, 3 Women and Nashville are Altman's best, but I'd put this right behind those, along with McCabe and The Long Goodbye. Shame that it was such a bomb (making back only $1 mil on a 19 mil budget), and that it is so rarely discussed at all, as evidenced by this tiny excuse for a message board! It's one of those odd films that is made by a major director and featuring major stars, got some decent critical reviews, and yet all but disappeared -- the kind of film where there are no clips available of it on YouTube besides the trailer. I think a lot of people who don't know about it would enjoy it, though, particularly fans of (of course) jazz music and fans of stuff like Chinatown, The Long Goodbye, L.A. Confidential, Public Enemies, Miller's Crossing, Boardwalk Empire, or The Funeral (another masterful and underrated 30s-set gangster tale from 1996).