Tarentino Stumbles...

Rating: Null/10 (8 November 2002)

Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, but based on Elmore Leonard's 1995 bestseller Rum Punch, the ridiculously too-long Jackie Brown is like Pulp Fiction on a weight-reduction plan. Gone are all the fattening calories like long-winded, witty dialogue, ultra-violence, street-humor, over-the-top character development and good roles for everyone (`Tiny' Lister, Chris Tucker and Robert DeNiro play stock characters with next-to-nothing to do).
Let's just say the best thing about Jackie Brown is... well, Jackie Brown (Pam Grier), a hard-up stewardess who supplements her meager income by smuggling cash into the US for a gunrunner named Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson). Grier, the blaxploitation she-god of 70s tough-cookie flicks, barely misses a step, proving she belongs back on the silver-screen amidst Julia Roberts and Sigourney Weaver. But Jackson, on the other hand -- I found myself caring less and less about his near-unexciting character!
Crime goes unpunished until Jackie is nabbed by ATF agent Ray Nicolet (Michael Keaton) and LA detective Mark Dargus (Michael Bowman), at which point a cat-and-mouse caper begins. The cops pressure Jackie to help bring down Ordell, threatening prison if she refuses (Ordell wants to kill her before she does). So, with the help of sympathetic bail bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster), Jackie launches a foolishly daring plan.
The biggest problem with Jackie Brown is that Tarentino made a film with `real' salt-of-the-earth characters  the kind of conspiring people you see in local bars who live right around the corner. Unfortunately, most `real' people we know are boring and limp; certainly less-than-dynamic. And that's not why we love Tarentino, it's why we love film-makers like John Sayles. But Tarentino himself set us up for this fall  two sensational films followed by an ordinary film? Let's hope Tarentino has got a heavy brand of cork and rubber in his next bat when he steps up to the plate again -- I'd hate to think of him as a two-trick pony!
At least there wasn't a chase-scene to end the film.