Black Sheep of the Tarantino Herd

Rating: 9/10 (2 July 2007)

Small-time gangster Ordell (Jackson) runs guns. He also has the nasty habit of using a legit bail bondsman (Forster) to haul any captured associates out of prison and kill them before they can talk. When hostess Jackie Brown (Grier) is arrested for smuggling Ordell's money into the US, she persuades Ordell to let use her to con the feds and smuggle his entire fortune under their noses, while deceiving the police into thinking she is helping them nail Ordell. But whose side is Jackie Brown really on?
After his crowning success Pulp Fiction, Tarantino tones down the stylistic fireworks and adapts an Elmore Leonard novel. The slick double-crossing and elegant narrative is pure Leonard, but the dialogue and humor remain vintage Tarantino, and the union works wonders. After an opening shot that bodes ill by shamelessly copying "The Graduate", and hints that this might be a mere blaxploitation revival, Tarantino plays things more subtly with a laid-back and elegant direction, comprised mostly of long takes and a fluid camera - courtesy of longtime Del Toro collaborator Guillermo Navarro - allowing us to focus on the actors and their ace performances. Robert Forster received most of the praise at the time of release for underacting to a tee, while Samuel L. Jackson's larger than life Ordell and Robert De Niro's half-wit convict Louis steal the showier moments. In truth, this is a group effort, and everybody delivers, from Pam Grier to Michael Keaton (in a role he reprized a year later in "Out of Sight", also adapted from a Leonard novel).
Jackie Brown was not fully appreciated when it first came out, and Tarantino sadly seems to have disavowed it to some extent, following it with the indulgent and pointless Kill Bill duo, before finding himself again with the more playful Deathproof. This might be less showy and hard-hitting than Reservoir Dogs, but it remains his most sensitive and mature film to date. One can only hope he will explore such territory again soon.