Elmore Leonard meets blaxploitation

Rating: 8/10 (27 January 2016)

I'll start with a confession. When I first saw this movie I was 16 years old, I had no idea about Foxy Brown and the only film I'd ever seen Pam Grier in was Escape from LA, where she played a trans-gender character. The names on the marquee I was interested in were Quentin Tarantino, Michael Keaton and Samuel L Jackson. That's what brought me here. Elmore Leonard I knew as the writer of Get Shorty, but he was hardly a name I was looking to follow around, unthinkable in hindsight given that he was the author who wrote the Pulpy novels that three of the best flicks of the 90s (this, Get Shorty and Out of Sight) were based on, but I was 16 and there was no smart phones with google apps on them to find this stuff out. We didn't even have DVD special features to learn this kind of stuff kids. Hell, we didn't really have DVDs in any meaningful way, so give me a break to start with, OK?
In a lot of ways this is my favourite Tarantino film to watch, not because it's his best, but because it's the one that seems the least like a Tarantino film. The story, not just the characters, are given time and room to flow and there's a certain feel to this film and the performances given by the main cast that is tangibly different to any other work he has done before or since. Jackie Brown seems to be a lot more similar to Get Shorty and Out of Sight stylistically than it does Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs. It's fascinating to see a Director like Tarantino adapt someone else's work and make a high quality film.
Pam Grier stars as the Jackie Brown of the title (a superb performance that carries the entire film), a flight attendant for a South American airline smuggling money into the country for gun runner Ordell Robbie (Samuel L Jackson). Unfortunately for Jackie, another one of Ordell's smugglers Beaumont Livingstone (Chris Tucker before Rush Hour) gets arrested and rats her out. For his sins, Beaumont is executed by Ordell. Jackie is then arrested at the airport by Ray Nicolette, (Michael Keaton), who I assume is an FBI agent due to a funny cameo Keaton makes as the same character in Out of Sight, and Detective Mark Dugas (Michael Bowen), who want her to wear a wire and help them get Ordell. Aided by bail bondsman Max Sherry (Robert Forster, superb, Oscar nominated) Jackie hatches a plan they might just get her out of this alive while Ordell has some funny scenes with his stoner associate Louis Gara (Robert de Niro in a pitch perfect stoner haze) and equally stoner girlfriend Melanie Ralston (Bridget Fonda). It all comes together into a satisfying final act with Jackie outsmarting the lot of them.
Jackie Brown doesn't try too hard to emulate Tarantino's earlier successes, but he does still play to his strengths, eliciting strong performances from a stellar cast. Grier and Forster were never this good again, while Fonda has rarely been this fun to watch ever. De Niro and Keaton effortlessly capture their roles, while Jackson's nuanced, sometimes menacing, performance is one of the triumphs of the film. He's said since that this was his favourite role in a Tarantino film, and it's easy to see why.
Well, there you have it. I've always enjoyed this film for its story, its strong performances and just its whole feel. Its a great companion piece for the equally excellent Out of Sight and another reminder of just how good it was to be a film fan in the mid-late 90s.