Jackie Brown

(If you happen to be in SLO come out and watch some Jackie Brown at The Palm tonight)

Watching Jackie Brown today is like watching a film from the filmmaker Tarantino could have become. While I feel using the term maturation does disservice to the movie’s Tarantino has made since then, all of which I love (yes even Death Proof) there is no denying that Jackie Brown is a very adult work, while Tarantino’s other films are fueled by a more anarchic adolescent sensibility. It’s a peek down the road not taken.

Which isn’t to say that there’s not a whole lot of Tarantino’s trademark irreverent humor, intextuality (“Killer had a Forty Five THEY want a Forty Five.”) deliciously rich dialogue and key little moments (“Is this the Delfonics?). But it all feels different somehow, like a seventies crime film, something like The Friends Of Eddie Coyle or Charley Varrick. Low key, grungy and very human.


Of course part of that has to do with the fact that Jackie Brown is based off of one of Elmore Leonard’s, the king of Seventies Crime Fiction, Novel’s. The other part of it has to do with the fact that half of Tarantino’s excellent cast could have stared in any of those seventies films. Robert Forester, Pam Grier, and Robert De Niro (Maybe the last cinematic evidence of him giving a fuck, this or Ronin I go back and forth) all do amazing work. Particularly Forester in an understated, somehow heartbroken performance. Forester isn’t any kind of badass. He’s just a guy who knows how to handle himself. He uses his competency like an armor, but somehow remains endearingly vulnerable. He’s just such a hangdog you can’t help but feel for him.

The movie of course belongs to Grier. Who brings to Brown a sense of compelling sadness and weary, along with her trademark sexiness and cool. There’s a real sense of soul to Jackie. She’s someone whose missed a lot of chances in her life and senses this might be her last one. Even getting killed is preferable to missing another shot.

The rest of the cast is fantastic as well. Samuel Jackson, is fantastic as Ordell, a sentient ball of jovial malevolence. The pleasure that Jackson gets from the role and the pleasure Ordell gets from himself are inseparable. And when he starts to really lose his shit as the film goes on, he becomes a genuinely menacing figure.

The rest of the cast is great too. Particularly Bridget Fonda as an aging Sex Kitten, and Michael Keaton as a DEA cop. Hell even Chris Tucker Rises to the level of tolerable.

The plot of Jackie Brown is purposefully low stakes. A couple hundred thousand up for grab after a misplaced baggie of Cocaine gives the police leverage over the titular character, a low level runner for the weapon’s dealer Ordell Robbie. Ordell uses the services of Bondsman Max Cherry to get the witnesses against him sprung from the police, then executes them. Together Cherry and Brown devise a plan to rip off both the Feds and Ordell. People start to lose their shit, people start to die.

Tarantino shoots the whole thing in a natural sunny California bright light. Jackie Brown doesn’t look like a crime film. Even De Palma’s Scarface had more scenes shot in the shadows then this. There’s none of the mad plotting of Tarantino’s other films. It’s as he describes it, a hang out movie, kind of like a crime movie directed by Richard Linklater. Except you know not terrible like The Newton Boys was.

Jackie Brown may be a divergence but it is by no means minor. Simply put there are very few films so purely pleasurable to watch.