Taratino's Coming of Age

Rating: 9/10 (2 November 2009)

"Jackie Brown," Quentin Tarantino's third feature length film, finds the writer/director at perhaps his most straight-forward and mature. While he rejects the notion that he is maturing as a film-maker in an interview featured on the DVD, it is quite obvious that the man who created such cult classics as "Pulp Fiction" and "Reservoir Dogs" was out to prove he wasn't merely a one-trick pony, and it paid off in one of his most character driven and rewarding efforts to date.
Adapted from the Elmore Leonard novel, "Rum Punch," "Jackie Brown" is the story of an aging stewardess (Pam Grier) in trouble with the law who concocts a scheme to rip off an arms dealer (Samuel L. Jackson) of a cool $500,000. She of course needs the help of a bail bondsman (Robert Forster) whose midlife crisis takes a backseat to the crush he develops for her. On the surface, it appears to be just another heist film, but underneath all the layers, at its core, "Jackie Brown" is an unlikely love story from probably the last director you'd expect. While the job and the way it's carried out is a big part of the film, Tarantino knows well enough to allow his characters ample time to breathe, making it the sort of film where you forget for a while who you're watching and simply appreciate the unique personalities they bring to life.
It also helps, of course, that the film is filled to brim with a great cast of old and new, obscure and respectable. Robert De Niro has perhaps one of the most entertaining roles as an ex-con who keeps to himself, silently observing and judging the world he is getting reacquainted with. Bridget Fonda plays Samuel L. Jackson's sex-pot/pot-head surfer girl girlfriend with a dry sense of humor that bounces well off of De Niro's stone-cold demeanor. Grier and Forster, who were both dragged from the depths of obscurity only to find their careers slightly revitalized for the film are both in top form and go a long way in driving home the human nature of the plot. Michael Keaton, playing an ATF agent who would later appear as the same character in 1998's "Out of Sight," is perhaps one of the film's greatest surprises, as he is in turns quirky and overly confident, while being clueless all the while.
While fans of Tarantino's more notorious fare will have a hard time seeing the brilliance of "Jackie Brown," it's a film that will no doubt please the palate of the viewer who craves rich characters, natural pacing and an engrossing plot, not to mention a killer soundtrack. Out of all of Tarantino's work, this is the one that is the most grounded in reality and, aside from Forster's Oscar nomination, deserved much more acclaim and credit than it was given. In a way, this is the cult classic in Tarantino's league of cult classics, and a film that certainly holds up time and time again.