Jackie Brown ---- *** (out of 5) (1997)
Cast: Pam Grier, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Forster, Bridget Fonda, Michael Keaton
Director(s): Quentin Tarantino
Screenwriter(s): Quentin Tarantino
Released on: December 25, 1997
Reviewed on: March 25, 2005
Rated: R - for profanity, violence, sex, and drug use
After watching this film, it seems less like a fresh new idea for Quentin Tarantino and more like an exercise in over-indulgence. With 1997's JACKIE BROWN, he is attempting to wring dry the concepts that made his first few movies so fantastic. But instead of sharp dialogue, wild gunfights, and excellent actors, we get a trite screenplay, tedious standoffs, and most disappointing of all, an uninteresting performance by Samuel L. Jackson. Sure, he's got some great lines but nothing that comes close to his eccentric personality in Pulp Fiction. His best line is at the very beginning of the film and regards AK-47's, but the rest of his on-screen time only shows occasional flashes of Jules Winnfield, amidst formulaic plot-driven dialogue. Though it might seem that I'm disappointed in Jackson's role, believe it or not, he's the best element that JACKIE BROWN has.
The title character, Jackie Brown, is a flight attendant who works for a low-class airline company. She gets caught smuggling a huge amount of cash and a bag of cocaine into the United States, so her boss, a guns dealer named Ordell Robbie, pays for her to be released with help from a bondsman named Max Cherry. Now that her situation is cleared up, Ordell needs Jackie's help to get $500,000 of his money into the states without interference from federal agents. When word gets out, however, the double-crossing begins with everyone scrambling to get their hands on the half-million.
It's not that I disliked JACKIE BROWN, contrary to what was suggested. The only thing about it that bothered me was that it was too ordinary a film for a director like Tarantino. The story was told in chronological order, rather than his usual non-linear format, which is a lot more engaging. Not much is done with the ending either, and it's rather anticlimactic for a film that had so much great build-up for a while with surprises and betrayals galore. For a crime film, it's mostly satisfying and has several nuggets of Tarantino-esque style sprinkled on it here and there, but it's nothing outstanding. Don't expect anything more than a moderately worthwhile guns-and-gangsters soap opera.
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