CONTAINS SPOILERS THROUGHOUT. 'Chicago Joe and the Showgirl' is based on the true story of Karl Hulten and Elizabeth Jones. Hulten was a Swedish-born American GI stationed in England during WW2. Jones was a Welsh-born woman who had drifted through several professions, including striptease. When Hulten and Jones met (in October 1944), they embarked on a crime spree that lasted for only a few violent days.
This is the same premise that's been told better elsewhere. Hulten and Jones had the same dynamic as Bonnie and Clyde, or Starkweather and Fugate (the couple who inspired the movie 'Badlands'). A cheap psychopath meets a girl who wants some thrills. She's aroused by the danger he represents. Her arousal emboldens him to increasingly violent acts.
'Chicago Joe and the Showgirl' opens with an unseen American narrator informing us portentously that this story is absolutely true, and that nothing has been invented nor changed. This sort of statement activates my baloney barometer, but I felt better when I saw David Yallop credited as scriptwriter. Yallop is a brilliant journalist who has authored several true-crime books, impeccably researched and scrupulously accurate. As the opening credits rolled, I recognised the voice of the narrator: he is John Lahr, an American journalist based in London, likewise noted for scrupulous accuracy in his writing. Lahr does not appear on screen in this film, perhaps because his somewhat comical facial features would remind audiences of his father Bert Lahr. (Coincidentally, the two stars of this film -- Kiefer Sutherland and Emily Lloyd -- also had actor fathers.)
I'm sure that Yallop knows far more than I do about the Hulten/Jones case, yet I spotted two inaccuracies. When Hulten and Jones first meet, he invites her to pick out a well-dressed woman whose fur coat Jones fancies, which Hulten then steals for her. Later, as they seek greater thrills, their crime spree escalates until Hulten murders a cabdriver. In real life, the coat Hulten stole off a woman's back was white ermine; in this movie, it's a darker fur. More crucially, the film reverses the order of these incidents: in real life, Hulten stole the fur *after* he murdered the cabbie, with Jones eagerly witnessing both crimes. I assume that the filmmakers deliberately reversed these incidents so that the couple's crimes would build up to the homicide that got them nicked.
Emily Lloyd (Welsh by name but not by upbringing) makes a creditable effort to copy the working-class Neath accent of Elizabeth Jones. (Ironically, the real Betty Jones was not very good-looking, even by 1940s standards; the real Karl Hulten was far more handsome than Kiefer Sutherland.) Sutherland gives an impressive performance; in early scenes, he strides through London in a lieutenant's uniform and returns the salutes of enlisted men. Later, we learn that he's actually an AWOL private.
This film's art direction is elaborate, yet wretched. Kiefer Sutherland's performance as a 1944 psychopath is compromised by his 1990 hairstyle. (U.S. Army soldiers in WW2 were not issued styling mousse.) Emily Lloyd and all the other women in this film have coiffures and make-up reflecting somebody's 1990 notion of 1940s retro, rather than actual 1940s styles. Women in wartime Britain had to improvise cosmetics or do without; it would have been nice to see some mention of that here. Yet I was impressed by a brief scene of an elaborate multi-tiered wedding cake ... made of cardboard, with a secret compartment containing the real and far less impressive (wartime) cake.
At one point, the killers duck into a cinema to watch 'Double Indemnity'. (Was this movie screened in wartime England?) I dislike movies in which the characters attend a (better) movie that conveniently reflects their own situation.
After the couple are arrested, the British authorities hand over Hulten to the U.S. Army for military trial. The film gets this detail right: Army lawyers deposed Hulten, then chose to give him back so the Home Office could try him in Crown Court. The movie's climax is utterly laughable, featuring the collision of two old-movie clichés. A line of helmeted and bewhiskered British bobbies (out of 'Dixon of Dock Green') face off against a line of trenchcoated American reporters with snap-brim trilbies and elaborate flashbulb cameras (out of 'The Front Page'). I expected the bobbies to twirl their truncheons and mumble 'Here now, what's all this, then?' while the reporters would grab candlestick telephones and shout 'Get me Rewrite!' Actually, this last scene isn't meant to be realistic: it's shown from Betty Jones's viewpoint, and she's now entertaining delusions of showbiz glamour. Still, this climax reminded me of several much better films -- the musical 'Chicago', 'King of Comedy' and especially 'Sunset Boulevard' -- in which a delusional criminal basks in imaginary stardom while Justice closes in.
At the end, Lahr's narration returns to tell us the outcome: Hulten was executed in HM Prison Pentonville a few weeks before V-E Day. Betty Jones was given a long prison sentence, and eventually paroled. The grim truth is that this 'wild' couple, often deemed the British version of Bonnie and Clyde, were two very common criminals indeed. So were the real Bonnie and Clyde -- in their entire crime career, Bonnie and Clyde never stole as much money as Jesse James grabbed in a single hold-up -- but at least Bonnie and Clyde were brilliant at self-promotion, and they'll be famous for a long time. Hulten and Jones were cheap and worthless, and they deserve to be forgotten. So does this movie, which I'll rate 3 out of 10.
This is the same premise that's been told better elsewhere. Hulten and Jones had the same dynamic as Bonnie and Clyde, or Starkweather and Fugate (the couple who inspired the movie 'Badlands'). A cheap psychopath meets a girl who wants some thrills. She's aroused by the danger he represents. Her arousal emboldens him to increasingly violent acts.
'Chicago Joe and the Showgirl' opens with an unseen American narrator informing us portentously that this story is absolutely true, and that nothing has been invented nor changed. This sort of statement activates my baloney barometer, but I felt better when I saw David Yallop credited as scriptwriter. Yallop is a brilliant journalist who has authored several true-crime books, impeccably researched and scrupulously accurate. As the opening credits rolled, I recognised the voice of the narrator: he is John Lahr, an American journalist based in London, likewise noted for scrupulous accuracy in his writing. Lahr does not appear on screen in this film, perhaps because his somewhat comical facial features would remind audiences of his father Bert Lahr. (Coincidentally, the two stars of this film -- Kiefer Sutherland and Emily Lloyd -- also had actor fathers.)
I'm sure that Yallop knows far more than I do about the Hulten/Jones case, yet I spotted two inaccuracies. When Hulten and Jones first meet, he invites her to pick out a well-dressed woman whose fur coat Jones fancies, which Hulten then steals for her. Later, as they seek greater thrills, their crime spree escalates until Hulten murders a cabdriver. In real life, the coat Hulten stole off a woman's back was white ermine; in this movie, it's a darker fur. More crucially, the film reverses the order of these incidents: in real life, Hulten stole the fur *after* he murdered the cabbie, with Jones eagerly witnessing both crimes. I assume that the filmmakers deliberately reversed these incidents so that the couple's crimes would build up to the homicide that got them nicked.
Emily Lloyd (Welsh by name but not by upbringing) makes a creditable effort to copy the working-class Neath accent of Elizabeth Jones. (Ironically, the real Betty Jones was not very good-looking, even by 1940s standards; the real Karl Hulten was far more handsome than Kiefer Sutherland.) Sutherland gives an impressive performance; in early scenes, he strides through London in a lieutenant's uniform and returns the salutes of enlisted men. Later, we learn that he's actually an AWOL private.
This film's art direction is elaborate, yet wretched. Kiefer Sutherland's performance as a 1944 psychopath is compromised by his 1990 hairstyle. (U.S. Army soldiers in WW2 were not issued styling mousse.) Emily Lloyd and all the other women in this film have coiffures and make-up reflecting somebody's 1990 notion of 1940s retro, rather than actual 1940s styles. Women in wartime Britain had to improvise cosmetics or do without; it would have been nice to see some mention of that here. Yet I was impressed by a brief scene of an elaborate multi-tiered wedding cake ... made of cardboard, with a secret compartment containing the real and far less impressive (wartime) cake.
At one point, the killers duck into a cinema to watch 'Double Indemnity'. (Was this movie screened in wartime England?) I dislike movies in which the characters attend a (better) movie that conveniently reflects their own situation.
After the couple are arrested, the British authorities hand over Hulten to the U.S. Army for military trial. The film gets this detail right: Army lawyers deposed Hulten, then chose to give him back so the Home Office could try him in Crown Court. The movie's climax is utterly laughable, featuring the collision of two old-movie clichés. A line of helmeted and bewhiskered British bobbies (out of 'Dixon of Dock Green') face off against a line of trenchcoated American reporters with snap-brim trilbies and elaborate flashbulb cameras (out of 'The Front Page'). I expected the bobbies to twirl their truncheons and mumble 'Here now, what's all this, then?' while the reporters would grab candlestick telephones and shout 'Get me Rewrite!' Actually, this last scene isn't meant to be realistic: it's shown from Betty Jones's viewpoint, and she's now entertaining delusions of showbiz glamour. Still, this climax reminded me of several much better films -- the musical 'Chicago', 'King of Comedy' and especially 'Sunset Boulevard' -- in which a delusional criminal basks in imaginary stardom while Justice closes in.
At the end, Lahr's narration returns to tell us the outcome: Hulten was executed in HM Prison Pentonville a few weeks before V-E Day. Betty Jones was given a long prison sentence, and eventually paroled. The grim truth is that this 'wild' couple, often deemed the British version of Bonnie and Clyde, were two very common criminals indeed. So were the real Bonnie and Clyde -- in their entire crime career, Bonnie and Clyde never stole as much money as Jesse James grabbed in a single hold-up -- but at least Bonnie and Clyde were brilliant at self-promotion, and they'll be famous for a long time. Hulten and Jones were cheap and worthless, and they deserve to be forgotten. So does this movie, which I'll rate 3 out of 10.