Review of Jackie Brown (1997) by Daniel R — 27 Mar 2011

Personal Score: 10/10.

Quentin Tarantino has created some of cinema's most memorable characters, from Jules & Vincent to Aldo the Apache. He's created women on a warpath in The Bride and Shoshanna, and the wicked men who did them wrong in Bill and Colonel Hans Landa. But of all of Tarantino's amazing characters, never has one been treated with such love, nor been so worthy of love than Jackie Brown. Jackie Brown (Pam Grier), adapted from Elmore Leonard's book Rum Punch, is the story of a 40-something female flight attendant who has to play both sides of a cops and robbers game in order to stay out of jail and end up with $500,000 at the end of it.

We first see Jackie as she's about to get onto one of her flights. She works for the dingiest airline one could imagine, with terrible pay and benefits, but that's not because she's a fool. Jackie's made some mistakes in her life that prevent her from any advancement, but she does the best she can under the circumstances. She also is under the employ of an arms dealer, Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson). She has little to do with the guns themselves, but she does help to handle money transfers between the States and Mexico. Upon arriving back from Mexico after one of her flights, she's greeted by two ATF agents, Ray Nicholette and Mark Dargus (Michael Keaton and Michael Bowen). Ray and Mark have been after Ordell for quite some time, and are well aware of Jackie's job of money transferring. They take her in and make her the offer to help bring down Ordell rather than face serious jail time. Jackie has no desire to go back to jail, but at the same time she knows that Ordell will find out about her arrest and will kill her as a loose end. Ordell has plans to take his money and move to Mexico, and he has no problem getting rid of anyone or anything that might jeopardize that. One may think this an impossible Catch-22 for Jackie, but like I said, she's no fool.

Jackie manages to stop Ordell from killing her, while at the same time maintaining the trust between them. She even manages to come up with an ingenious scheme for Ordell to get his money without the cops getting it. At the same time, she feeds information about this scheme to the ATF agents so they can capture him. However, what they don't know is that while Jackie has every intention of letting them catch Ordell, she has no intention of letting them get that money.

Jackie's scheme to keep the money for herself is quite ingenius. She's up against some pretty smart people, but she's got brains herself and knows how to apply them. She cannot, however, do it alone. She enlists the help of Max Cherry (Robert Forster, in an Oscar-nominated performance), a bail bondsman who's been falling in love with Jackie since he took her home from jail. He fully understands the danger of crossing these people, but he also wants to help Jackie, and he can't help but think she's smart enough for it all to work. The chemistry between Grier and Forster is excellent.

Jackie Brown has heart like no other Tarantino film. It's a tribute to the queen of blaxploitation cinema, Pam Grier, but also a wonderfully told tale of a woman who's been in the gutter all her life, paid her dues, and now gets paid back. Tough and smart as Jackie is, she's endearing as well. We start to feel for her what Max Cherry feels for her. We love her, even if she's a bit intimidating.

The performances in Jackie Brown, as in every Tarantino film, are outstanding. It's a shame Jackson wasn't nominated for his performance, and nothing short of criminal that Pam Grier wasn't nominated for Best Actress, which she also should have won (Helen Hunt won for As Good As It Gets). There are many excellent actors in this film that I haven't mentioned, such as Robert DeNiro, Chris Tucker, and Bridget Fonda (okay, maybe DeNiro is the only "great" actor from that bunch, but they all do a great job in this film). This film also has, again as every Tarantino film has, an awesome soundtrack. The useage of the ballad "Across 110th Street" in both the opening sequence and the closing scene is perfect, and the rest of it is brilliant as well.

I absolutely love Jackie Brown. It's easily one of Tarantino's best films and also his most underappreciated. It's smart, witty, fun, brilliantly acted and written, and the most heartfelt film he's done thus far.