Jackie Brown is impossibly cool. From the moment it starts and Bobby Womack’s “Across 110th Street” plays as Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) hustles through the airport to her stewardess job, it feels like you’ve just sat down in the most comfortable chair you’ve ever been in. Maintaining that cool demeanor while crackling with excitement throughout is a next-level balancing act by Quentin Tarantino. For a director who has never lacked confidence, Jackie Brown represents something else: a film that knows it’s great rather than one that wants its audience to know how cool and great it is. That’s not meant as a slight to Tarantino’s catalogue, just as a testament to the magic he captured with Jackie Brown.
Chalk it up to the melding of Tarantino and Elmore Leonard. Their sensibilities are a perfect match. The changes Tarantino makes from Leonard’s novel Rum Punch, namely changing Jackie from white to black and layering in the Blaxploitation influence feels like a natural extension for the story. Not only does it give us Pam Grier, but it allows for all the history that comes with casting her to add depth to the story.
Grier plays Jackie, a stewardess with a quiet life that is passing her by and not giving her much. She’s unfortunately mixed up with Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson) a braggadocious gun-runner, who’s as slimy as he is conniving. Jackie gets popped smuggling some of his money and finds herself caught between law enforcement and Ordell. But, opportunity comes knocking and Jackie sees a chance to pit those two against each other. LAPD Detective Mark Darius (Michael Bowen) and ATF Agent Ray Nicollete (Michael Keaton) squeeze Jackie to help them take down Ordell, while Ordell still has money he needs transported.
Enter Max Cherry (Robert Forster) as the bail bondsman who is in business with Ordell without being under his thumb. Max and Jackie are the coolest of customers. They’re content to stay silent and let everyone else carry the conversation. The power players in the story, Ordell, Ray, and Mark, constantly remind everyone that they are at the top of their respective food chains. Jackie and Max, well, they’re just pawns. But, Jackie and Max are quintessential “playing chess while everyone else plays checkers” characters. They’re quiet because they don’t need to speak more than necessary. Grier and Forster’s performances crackle because they allow silences and eye movements tell us all we need to know. For a movie full of scheming and betrayal, the film is always at its most exciting when Max and Jackie share a scene.
As the movie rolls along there’s a feeling of sadness that creeps in along the edges. It has to do with the characters being trapped in their station in life. Ray and Mark have the traditionally noble jobs, but for all the work they’ve put in, for all the training they’ve gone through, and promotions they’ve chased, they’re going to forever be dealing with guys like Ordell or harassing citizens like Jackie. People like Melanie (Bridget Fonda) and Louis (Robert De Niro) with no real prospects in life hang around for as long as Ordell has use for them. Beaumont (Chris Tucker) is another pissant caught in Ordell’s web. Then there’s Jackie and Max. These are characters that have lived. They’ve dealt with the bullshit for so long that I feel tired on their behalf. I know we’re in the lives of these characters for such a small amount of time, but it’s so easy to imagine how their whole lives have been and what they’ll continue to be after the credits roll.
Jackie Brown is my skeleton key for Quentin Tarantino’s work. To varying degrees, I liked all of his films, but it wasn’t until I watched Jackie Brown for the first time in 2016 that the barrier came down and I saw what many others already saw in Tarantino’s work. Subsequent rewatches bumped his other films up in my estimation, but Jackie Brown remains at the top of my personal rankings with only one other movie really challenging for that spot. I’m not sure that there is anything Jackie Brown does that Tarantino hasn’t done in his other films, but there’s something about the alchemy of Jackie Brown that continues to set it apart for me.
Lionsgate brings Jackie Brown to 4KUHD with Steelbook and Standard Edition, alongside Kill Bill Volume 1 & 2, and a re-issue of Reservoir Dogs.
