JACKIE BROWN (director/writer:Quentin Tarantino; cinematographer: Guillermo Navarro; cast: Pam Grier (Jackie Brown), Samuel L. Jackson (Ordell Robbie), Robert Forster (Max Cherry), Michael Keaton (Ray Nicolette), Robert De Niro (Louis Gara), Bridget Fonda (Melanie), Michael Bowen (Mark Dargus), Chris Tucker (Beaumont Livingston), 1997)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
An unconventional film adapted from an Elmore Leonard story about double-crosses and gun smuggling. Former black exploitation picture queen, Pam Grier, plays the hard luck 44-year-old airline attendant who works for the gun-runner Samuel L. Jackson in order to supplement her low paying job (her salary is only 16 grand a year), but she gets caught smuggling drugs and money in from the Mexico to L.A. flight. She realizes that she has been set-up, so she cuts a deal with the AFT agent (Keaton) & the L.A. cop (Bowen) to entrap Jackson, and she makes a deal with Jackson so that she can continue to take money in for him by telling him about the deal she cut with the feds; whereby, she can bring him his half million dollars he got from his guns and she'll get 50 g's from him for her effort.
What is unconventional about this film is obviously not the plot, we have seen all this before, but the dialogue that is deliciously witty and outrageous, every character in the film has something to say that flies in the face of convention.These are people I wouldn't want to spend quality time with. I certainly would not want to be exchanging barbs with them. But I do find them charming on the screen, as I am able to ignore how inane the dialogue really is and how threadbare the story is, all because there was too much to like about this film to be over critical of it (I liked Tarantino's homage to Grier and the '70s, as he plays some Delphonics soundtracks and introduces Pam's appearance in the film with a '70s soundtrack of Bobby Womack singing "Across 110th Street").
This is a film about characters not story line. Bridget Fonda plays the part of the sex-pot, druggie girlfriend of Jackson, who possesses a twisted sense of humor that doesn't sit too well with Robert De Niro. He is the bumbling ex-con and right-hand man of Jackson, reacquainting himself with the crime scene after just being released from prison, serving 4-years for a bank robbery. This is a very quiet role for an actor of his stature, but he performs it as he should, on a low level, not upstaging the loquacious Jackson. Chris Tucker is the Jackson employee who screws up and who Jackson bails out of jail and then asks him as a favor to him if he can get into the car trunk and take a short ride with him so that he can pay back what Jackson did for him by being a back-up for him in a gun deal Jackson has going down. The scene is brilliantly funny, as Tucker tells Jackson why he doesn't want to get in the trunk. It is funny even after we see and realize the violence that follows because we don't care what happens to most of the characters in this film, not even to the rather sweet Pam, though we are somewhat affected by her desperate situation for a moment or two. But when we start thinking about where she's at, and even if we realize that she is forced into being so cunning as a matter of survival, we are still not that sympathetic to her.
Robert Forster plays the 56-year-old sentimental yet hard-nosed bail bondsman who falls for Pam and helps her carry off her scheme. He steals the picture in a low-key, enigmatic performance. He might be the only one in the film we could care about, and the only one we wonder about, but, even for him, we do not feel deeply emotional. His silence and hidden motives are contrasted with Jackson's blatant loudness, and he comes off rather well. After a while the Jackson character becomes too much for us to handle and actually starts wearing on our nerves.
The film pulls off its goal to be entertaining, but falls way short of being as entertaining a film as PULP FICTION. What is noteworthy about the film is how crisp the acting was. I, especially, liked the way Pam played her part. It was very believable and without believing her the picture would have fallen apart. But, overall, the story lacked the kind of depth needed for it to be anything but a rather well-made and entertaining film.
REVIEWED ON 9/16/98 GRADE: B
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
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