Billy knows there's too much publicity to get Velma off on a jury trial, so he asks Mama to find someone. He sets Roxie up as the 'sweetest little jazz killer', Velma vanishes from the papers; Billy can cut a plea-bargain for his original client. He really is the best lawyer.
It gets better — in the process, he convinces the jury (and possibly the press) that the assistant district attorney tampered with evidence to frame Roxie. Not only did he get ten grand off of Roxie and Velma while keeping his perfect win record, he used them to eliminate a powerful rival.
Pay close attention to his words in the "tap-dance" number. He never actually lies. In fact, he says the journal might've been faked by a "mysterious benefactor", someone who "sounds like a lawyer" with "a sample of my client's handwriting". That does describe the DA. It also describes himself
His tap dancing routine counts as Visual Pun, since tap dancing is an old expression that means a person has to try really hard to sell their argument and change the minds of the people around them.
The opening number "And All That Jazz" seems like a really cool opening number. Then you notice one of Velma's line "I'm no one's wife but, oh I love my life" seems just like a cool, feminist thing to say... until you realize she has just murdered her husband.
Reading Hunyak's translation from the Hungarian, she says that she doesn't know why she's in prison, and mentions her "famous lover." What if her lover's fame is what got her case attention in the first place — in this case, attention that led to her unjust execution? It would make her story a dark and complete inversion of Roxie's quest to find fame via murder.
Notice that you don't see her during the group dance parts of the "Cell Block Tango", further cementing the fact that she's innocent.
In the song "Class", Velma and Mama are complaining that there are no decent people left. Well, there is at least one: long-suffering, faithful, selfless Amos Hart. One of the lines in that song is "there ain't no gentleman that's fit for any use." And in the introduction to "Roxie", Roxie explains that she cheated on him because he was no good in bed—as in, not fit for any use.
Also a callback to "Mr. Cellophane." Amos is the closest thing to a decent person the film has...but they forgot he existed.
In their final number, Velma and Roxie are doing the sister-act number Velma described in "I Can't Do It Alone" while wearing the white sequined dresses from Roxie's fantasy number "Roxie." It really is a combination of both their dreams, which almost seems to hint that even if they still hate each other, they both still got some happiness from their new post-prison lives.
The Hunyak is played by a Russian actress, and even Hungarians have trouble understanding her bit in Cell Block Tango. It's a double Language Barrier - her own people can't understand her clearly, so how can the cops?
Roxie and Velma might end the show on a high note, having opened their own act, but when happens when the stock market crashes and the Depression kicks off?
Amosdoesn't! Though as a lowly mechanic who'd saved up enough to shower affection on his undeserving wife, his quality of life probably wouldn't change too badly. And with Roxie out of his life, maybe he could find a good woman deserving of his time.
Besides, if he's smart, he can sell off all of Roxie's mementos, leaving him better off than he was when the play started (if by no other reasoning than "he's free of Roxie for good.").
Big if. Amos is many things, but smart isn't one of them.
In a darker note, it's hard to imagine those two big egos sharing the spotlight for very long. Both of them spent their entire time in prison resenting one another. And both of them have killed before.
And one of them killed her partner. She might claim that she can't do it alone, but that didn't stop her the first time.
Throughout the film, we see musical numbers taking place on an imaginary stage in the characters' minds. At the end of the film, Velma and Roxie perform a wildly successful show to an adoring audience. But... Is that their real performance at all? Or is it their imaginations?...
Compare Roxie's singing in the last musical number to her singing for her audition (after the imaginary sequence). Big difference, hm?
Even if you look at the difference between "Nowadays" and the "Hot Honey Rag" sequence (which appear ...In That Order in the musical), the difference is very pronounced.
Personally, I always took it as real. The fantasy sequences are always made apparent within the movie if they are fantasies, and the last one seems to be very real, similar in style to "All That Jazz"- full audience, no surreal effects like having the performers completely isolated onstage or the scene just not making sense. Plus this troper just plain likes it better as a better ending, as it shows just how blind we as the public is willing to be sometimes to the reality of a celebrity's actions as long as they're still entertaining.
Some credence to this: in the 'mind theatre' segments, we only see audience members as shadowy figures such as in "All I Care About (is love)" but during "Nowadays", and "Hot Honey Rag", the audience is as clear as life. vanishing gun stands aside, it seems much more real than the other numbers post "All That Jazz"
As bad as Roxie and Velma are, it's worth remembering that Morton, Flynn, and the press are all shown to be utterly indifferent to their guilt. Profit and publicity are what matters, and mere moments pass between Roxie's verdict and the next killer going celebrity.
Roxie: And that's show biz, kid.
Film only Fridge Horror:
We don't actually see how Velma killed Veronica and her husband. She does however, bring a bloodied pistol to the show and hides it in one of her drawers. That implies that she pistol-whipped them. It's horrific to think of what the police found before they tracked her down at the club.
Fred's friend wasn't the manager he claimed to know, but a member of the band who bet Fred that he couldn't tap the mechanic's wife. How do you imagine he felt on learning that said wife murdered his friend? Even worse, Fred is smeared in the papers as a domestic abuser (which isn't far from the truth) so his memory is tarnished forever.
Meanwhile, Fred's wife and kids find out in the papers that he was maintaining an affair with the woman who gunned him down, and that apparently he grappled with her over the murder weapon. While if he did toss her around the way he tossed Roxie, it means she's free but it means finding out he was a liar. They never get closure, as Roxie gets acquitted.
There are some hints that Billy's Amoral Attorney status isn't just that he's Only in It for the Money; it's that he uses it to cope with the fact that there are some messed-up murder cases so he can keep doing his job. Consider when he's recounting what happened with Kitty; he's laughing at her husband's stupidity for bringing two women into their bed and falling asleep with them before she comes home while showing sympathy towards Kitty, around the time her mother hires him as her defense counsel. Billy detaches himself because that's the only possible thing to do so he doesn't burn out. Still doesn't defend his actions, as he basically falsifies evidence and commits perjury to get both Velma and Roxie out, and in telling Kitty's story he violates lawyer-client confidentiality.
Kitty had a gun hidden in the apartment, in a drawer, according to the film, that she used to murder her husband and his two lovers. Why did she have that hidden? It was definitely hers because it was wrapped in some of her clothes.
Anne says that the polygamist she poisoned was a Mormon, hence all the wives. Yet she also says she poisoned him by putting arsenic in his "drink" (implied to be alcoholic, so as to mask the taste). Except...Mormons aren't supposed to drink alcohol. Considering that it's only Mormon fundamentalist sects that practice polygamy, it seems a bit strange he would break that particular rule and be devout about everything else.
Maybe he was using his Mormonism as an excuse to have as many women as he wanted whilst ignoring the parts he didn't like?
Mormons also aren't supposed to commit adultery, but he was doing that as well. He was clearly not a very good Mormon.
You could read the line about him being Mormon as not meant to be taken literally; basically, the guy was seeing several women at the same time, so she called him a Mormon (a religion known for polygamy, at least in the past) as a sarcastic way of saying he was promiscuous.
Or, she's not being sarcastic, and just literally knows nothing else about Mormonism, and so assumed "Polygamy=Mormon."
Anne gives her late lover's name as Ezekiel Smith—deeply Biblical first name, surname of the founder of the Mormon faith—and says he's from Salt Lake City, a city founded by Mormons and a center of the Mormon faith. The implication seems to be that he was actually a Mormon.
Good luck finding ANY religious sect where every single member is 100% faithful to every single rule.
Maybe it was a Coleman Francis moment. He does love his coffee.
It's actually quite likely he really did like his drink. The Mormon prohibition against alcohol didn't become mandatory until 1921, when Prohibition really hit the US. Before then, it was mostly a suggestion, and even to this day, adherence varies by location.
in the exact same way as the snake did