Jackie Brown Review
by Luke Buckmaster (bucky AT alphalink DOT com DOT au)March 16th, 1998
Review: Jackie Brown
By Luke Buckmaster
Quentin Tarantino has a remarkable talent. Not only is he able to director cinematic masterpiece and write potent screenplays and stories, but he also achieves something that goes beyond experience or credits - he creates a stir.
Tarantino's knowledge of film came from his experience as a video clerk, and because he was never a film school graduate he didn't develop an identical style for all his films. Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown are all strikingly different. This is not to say that they don't bear the same extraordinary scents - the dialogues in his films are so delightfully original that it is hard to label them as anything else except "Tarantino."
Jackie Brown, his third directing attempt, has a much more adult feel to it than Quentin's other films. It's the story of middle aged adults contemplating the rest of their life, their health and desires, and everything that develops in between.
Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) is a flight hostess who works for a bottom rate airline, supplementing her miniscule income by smuggling money into the US for gun dealer Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson). However, after one flight she is caught out by an ATF agent (Michael Keaton) and an LA cop (Michael Bowman). They offer her a simple deal: go to prison or rat on Ordell. Either way, piles of money is involved. Ordell has around half a million dollars tucked away in Mexico, and becomes desperate to obtain it before it's too late.
We are introduced to the eccentric life of Ordell, his dim-witted partner Louis Gara (Robert DeNiro) and one of his girlfriends, the happy-and-high Melanie (Bridget Fonda). Sympathetic bail bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster) is thrown in the midst of Jackie's situation when Ordell pays him to release her from jail.
So let's examine what we have here: there are seven people and half a million in cash. Each has their own plan, each has their own desires - but the real question is: who is playing who?
Obviously, whatever Quentin Tarantino comes up with is going to be compared to the mosaic masterpiece that was Pulp Fiction. But as Quentin himself states: "Pulp Fiction is an Opera, this is a chamber." Although Jackie Brown is much more straightforward than Pulp, it is in many ways a better picture. Tarantino shows some camera aspects that are so original it is hard to believe that anyone would dare attempt them - one time the cinema screen splits in half (showing us two parts of the story), anther time an entire scene is shot in almost complete darkness.
It is with a strong passion for effective film making that Tarantino makes Jackie Brown, a wonderfully acted and shrewdly put together film delicatessen. It is a stylish, and very cool, middle aged film.
4 and a half stars out of 5
Maybe not Pulp Fiction but theirs plenty of cult friction
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