Tarantino's Third
This is Tarantino's third movie, and arguably his third best, coming in right behind Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill. Jackie Brown is a blaxploitation epic with a huge cast, fantastic dialogue and a very involving story. Seemingly this movie just shows criminals going about their business, but it actually weaves a very tight story. All the characters look they should be in the sixties, act like they should be in the sixties, but they're living in the nineties. It's quite an accomplishment.
A flight attendant named Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) is caught smuggling gun money for her boss by a Fed named Ray Nicolette (Michael Keaton). Now, she can blow her boss, Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson), out of the water and talk to get her freedom, but then she'd probably wind up dead. But meeting Max Cherry (Robert Forster), a bail bondsman, she hatches a scheme to force the Feds against Robbie and walk off with all that money. It's a really cool story, but is helped a great deal by Tarantino's sense of style and powerful performances by Grier, Jackson and Forster. It certainly isn't Tarantino's best story, but it is fantastic.
All of the actors look like they were born to play their part. Jackson is cool and laid back as the gun dealer Ordell Robbie. Grier is strong enough to stand up to Jackson's power, and they play off each other very nicely. We can actually believe that Jackie isn't afraid of Ordell at all. Robert DeNiro plays Ordell's sidekick, but infortunately, he only has one truly interesting scene in the movie. His character is practically a mute, which seems to be a waste of such an actor. But in that scene when his fury finally explodes, we can see why he was the perfect actor for the part. The story, for once, is told in chronological order. Tarantino only messes around with the time in one scene, that being the most pivotal scene. After sitting through more than half of the movie, it serves as a reminder that we're still watching a Tarantino movie. The movie is shot in such a manner and style that it looks like it could be a sixties film. If the quality was just a little more scratchy, you could swear that this film was made during the blaxploitation film in the sixites in seventies. So in that sense, this film is a colossal success, and Tarantino did exactly what he set out to do.