Summary Of The Movie 'Murderess Row In The Cook County Jail'

Tara Anderson

English 104

Brost

27 September 2013

Jazz, Liquor and Sex Appeal,
Chicago

At a time where crimes of passion flood the newspaper’s headlines, Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart find themselves in Chicago’s own Murderess Row in The Cook County Jail. Broadway fanatics everywhere raved about the 2002 award winner of best picture, Chicago, starring Renée Zellweger, Richard Gere and Catherine Zeta-Jones. The glitz and glamour of jazz, liquor and sex shine through in this film, but are all these things worth murdering someone for?
Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones) the nightclub sensation had killed her sister, Veronica, and her husband, Charlie because she walked in on them doing “number seventeen, the spread eagle” (Chicago).
This movie is geared toward the people who enjoy musicals and those who are Broadway fanatics. It’s a comedy, a crime, and a musical. This movie is definitely meant for adults of a mature stature. It’s full of violence, vulgar language and sex.
Each musical number that was performed throughout the movie conveyed strong emotionally depth. For example, The Cell Block Tango, each murderess on the row told their story. A line from the song was “And then he ran into my knife. He ran into my knife ten times”, when the woman said this line she said it with a strong start forward voice, the kind that one doesn’t trust. It is very hard to establish a sense of trust with any of these women’s stories, because all they wanted was to get off, but as they sang this song you could tell which one’s were innocent and which ones were guilty by the way they explained their crimes. Some cried and others said it like they were happy that they did
It’s a tricky thing in this movie but the audience knows Velma and Roxie are guilty for sure. There’s one minor character though that sang a part of the “Cell Block Tango” and was later hung for her crime, but you really couldn’t tell if she was guilty or not when she sang her part in the song and dance number. It leaves the viewers in awe. What really happened? Who was innocent and who was really guilty? Was this murder justified or was it in cold blood?
Flynn had to wait for just the right time to say some of the statements he makes throughout the movie, to make the reporters believe the story he’s conveying to them. Such as when Velma showed up to Roxie’s trail with evidence that had been planted, Flynn made it look like the prosecutor planted it when really it was him the whole time. He had to wait for just the right moment in the trial to bring this evidence to light otherwise it would’ve been thrown out. The whole case depended on his timeliness to make the