A dark and dangerous film from Robert Altman, with one of his favourite subjects, the low-life crime thriller in the Thirties, beautifully conjured up against a splendid jazz-score background. Jennifer Jason Leigh strikes some high notes as a tough, determined young lady called Blondie O'Hara, who takes on the Mob, when her weak crook husband (Dermot Mulroney) is captured by nasty Mr Big, who's bizarrely named Seldom Seen (Harry Belafonte), and held at his club. In the complex, intelligent plot, Leigh kidnaps a politician's wife (Miranda Richardson) to blackmail the politico into helping free Mulroney. Now it's soon obvious that no good is going to come of all this, and we're not headed for a nice, easy ride to a happy ending. As you'd expect from Altman, the film engages the brain as well as the emotions, and it's a quality product on all fronts. The acting's stylised but top-notch, pulling us in to the characters' little tragedies, while the Depression jazz-age atmosphere is superbly realised. An underrated gem.

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