# Jackie Brown (1997)

### reviewed by
Curtis Edmonds

by Curtis Edmonds -- blueduck@hsbr.org

We all know what a John Ford Western looks like, and what an Alfred Hitchcock thriller looks like, and what a Frank Capra drama looks like. And, amazingly enough, we all know what a Quentin Tarantino movie looks like. Amazing, I mean, becaus he's only directed three movies. Not that either Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction arise to the level of The Searchers, North by Northwest, or Meet John Doe, by any means, but Tarantino has a style as distinctive as John Wayne's red bandanna or Jimmy Stewart's stammer.

But the key to Tarantino movies has always been the dialogue. That's why True Romance is a "Tarantino movie", even though Tony Scott directed Tarantino's screenplay. That's why Pulp Fiction will be studied in film schools long after films like Buddy and The Jackal have evaporated like the smoke from a Red Apple cigarette. And that's why Jackie Brown is just a little bit short of being the best movie of the year. (Which would be Titanic.)

QT is working with an Elmore Leonard novel as his source material, and his screenplay has taken pains to remain true to Leonard's snappy dialogue. Although he's transplanted the setting from South Florida to the familiar suburban outback of Los Angeles, QT has studiously kept his trademark conversational vignettes out of the movie. Also, the native quirkiness of Tarantino characters is curiously absent -- partially because Tarantino's not working with his regular cast (Tim Roth, Steve Buscemi, Harvey Keitel, QT himself). And there's not a Big Kahuna Burger or a four-way gun confrontation in sight.

And yet, these are minor quibbles, important to only die-hard Tarantino fans. (And QT does add several signature touches -- one funny split-screen moment, one Indiana-Jones-type map, and the turning-point of the movie, told in three different segments from three different perspectives.)

Jackie Brown is a fine movie, driven by plot and dialogue rather than car chases and shootouts. At its center, it's a duel between ghetto arms dealer Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson, in yet another Oscar-worthy performance) and stewardess turned courier Jackie Brown (Pam Grier, making a boffo return to the screen). The winner will get half a million dollars, the loser will die.

Ordell is a man who knows that it's good to be the king. He rules his large gun business and small harem like an empire, dealing ruthlessly and efficiently with threats -- but he's a classy and smart king. Jackson takes a character that could be instantly repellant and makes us like and respect -- and fear -- him. The only note that rings false isn't Jackson's fault: QT has grafted his musical taste onto Ordell's character, and has him listening to the durndest music.

Where Ordell is powerful and commanding, Jackie Brown is dignified and sharp. Jackie is a 44-year-old stewardess on a cheesy airline, running money for Ordell from Mexico. An arrest by a federal marshal (Michael Keaton, in a surprisingly colorless, Joe Friday role) forces Jackie to try to walk a twisted tightrope to outwit both the feds and Ordell.

Grier is superb. She makes Jackie Brown into a real person, rather than just an older, wiser Foxy Brown. We see Jackie in different moods: quietly desparate in a small interrogation room, shouting down Ordell in a tense confrontation in her apartment, tired yet dignified in getting out of jail, alternately trying to overcome her nerves and then trying to act nervous for the benefit of the cops, and in a wonderful scene, rehearsing her fast-draw.

But the best reason to go see this movie is the one that no one expected, the one that no one had ever even heard from in years: Robert Forster. The veteran of such films as Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence, Satan's Princess, The Kinky Coaches and the Pom Pom Pussycats, and Orgy of the Nymphomaniacs somehow caught QT's eye, and got the part of bail bondsman Max Cherry. Forster isn't marquee-idol handsome, and his hair plugs are painfully obvious, but he is... Gary Cooper! Yes! When the menacing Ordell explains that he doesn't have the money on him for a bail bond, he replies calmly, in his flat, nasal voice: "Is white guilt supposed to make me forget that I run a business?" Tough, smart, and yet vulnerable to Jackie Brown's charms, Forster is a calm center of gravity amidst the swirling plots and counterplots. Maybe Forster doesn't get an Oscar, but it's a crying shame that the Academy doesn't give out a "Comeback Player of the Year" award.

However, the biggest disappointment in Jackie Brown is the performances turned in by the veterans: Michael Keaton and Robert DeNiro. They're both wasted in small, supporting roles -- Keaton as a hipster federal marshal, DeNiro as a stoner ex-con. DeNiro is primarily a sounding board for Jackson, and for much of the movie, he sits around on the couch with Bridget Fonda's surfer girl, smoking marijuana out of an improbable statuette. There's nothing wrong with any of their performances, it's just that I would have like to have seen more use out of this great cast.

But as good as the cast is, and a good as this movie is, the best thing is this: Jackie Brown makes me want to read more Elmore Leonard novels. That's a fine tribute to the skills of Jackson, Grier, and Forster -- and especially to my main man, Quentin Tarantino. In a Hollywood obsessed with special effects, tiresome sequels, and unfunny bathroom comedies, QT has once again proven that telling great stories in a stylish and original way is magic.

    Rating:  A

    --
    Curtis "BlueDuck" Edmonds
    blueduck@hsbr.org

The Hollywood Stock Brokerage and Resource http://www.hsbr.org/brokers/blueduck/

"I don't want to study law," she said with the same tone as if she had been saying, "I don't want to turn into a cockroach."

      --  Mark Helprin, "A Soldier of the Great War"

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