Chicago: A

O.J. Simpson. Now that's a name to raise voices and blood pressures. But it also raises memories - about his infamous trial more than ten years ago, about Johnny Cochran's infamous methods (or antics, depending on which side of the fence you sit on). And for those of us who were more musically-inclined, another memory raised is also of the 1995 Broadway revival of Bob Fosse's Chicago - a quainter, more appealing delight twenty years after the debut of his cynical original staging that transcended the stage and captivated auidences everywhere. Its dissection of the "celebrity criminal" was never so apt, and its numbers never so scorchingly now.

Ok, I stretch (a little).

But still, the revival was an event of sorts. And eight years after it, director Rob Marhsall's film version is no exception. There is no longer any one case to dominate the zeigeist, and make even more relevant the tone of the Kander & Ebb musical, but somehow our now inundated, fractured, media-obsessed consciousness is in even more need of addressing - in even more need of a good dressing down in a fancy dress and a snazzy tune. Accordingly: the story of Roxie Hart's (Renée Zellweger, giving the performance of her career) trial after she kills her lover, and the various charlatans and assorted characters she encounters on "Murderess Row" at the Cook County Jail. Foremost among them are Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones, also hot), a former vaudevillain herself, "Mama" Morton (Queen Latifah), who is both the warden and shadiest person in the prison, and Billy Flynn (Richard Gere), the most in-demand criminal lawyer in Illinois.

Chicago is a satire, and a very smart one at that; and it can occasionally veer into poignance and drama. But first and always it is a musical (and one originally concieved, choreographed, co-written, and directed by Bob Fosse), and to that end there are more than a handful of numbers. I'm told that on stage, the songs were vaudeville acts that propulsed the plot, but on the screen Rob Marshall's angle is to have them presented as fantastic products of Roxie's day-dreaming side (narrated by the silken tones of Taye Diggs, of course). However they go down, the end result is the same. That is to say: no matter where or when the show-opening "All That Jazz," or "Funny Honey" or "Nowadays" or "Roxie" or "When You're Good to Mama" were being belted, they'd still be fantastic.

It is a remarkably adroit screenplay by Bill Condon - who would later put his many talents to good use fashioning a film version of Dreamgirls - that strips the actual spoken dialogue down to its most fundamental and miraculous necesities. And it is a remarkable job by Marshall for reinterpreting Fosse's famously dense dance steps for a modern age hungering for retro-whatever. (Kudos to him as well for bathing each scene in a seperate neon, therefore constantly demanding our attention.) And above both of them lord the cast (which also includes John C. Reilly as Roxie's hapless hubby, Amos) who tear and claw through their roles with such vicious, deliriously entertaining pastiche the audience can only sit back and gape. Remember O.J. Simpson both before and after viewing Chicago. Do it beforehand to check your own mindset before strapping in for a glitzy, unabashedly and acridly glamorous musical. Do it after to re-assess the acute accuracy of a movie based on a musical based on a play based on events nearly 100 years old. There is a prophetic power to what drives Marshall's film: a coy, lean, and greedy pulse that mocks itself and taunts the audience for loving it. Whatever. You don't need to puzzle through Chicago, you merely need to laugh at it and then laugh at yourself for doing so.