Just when you thought it couldn't get any better, it actually didn't but it couldn't have come closer.

Rating: 9/10 (29 September 2008)

Tarantino is quoted to have said, when asked about his follow up to Pulp Fiction which caused shock waves throughout the industry and how he would match it, that he knew he couldn't go over Pulp Fiction; so he went under it. In Jackie Brown, Tarantino pulled off from that very sentence what he set out to do. The film is a quite simplistic and laid back experience for most of the time, only branching off at certain points with that distinct flair Tarantino brings to his films when it needs to. This is most evident during the actual trading of bags in the shopping mall, something Tarantino announces is about to happen with a title card and a cheeky fourth wall breaking comment: 'For real this time'.
But leading up to this heist or exchange or whatever is a thoroughly rewarding and distinct journey littered with realism; menace; great dialogue; great acting and individual personas for each of the characters. Given that Tarantino includes characters in Jackie Brown of the stoner, surfer bimbo and flight attendant variety and for him to make them come across as anything but the clichés and caricatures we have become to associate with them is a triumph in itself. Part of this is down to casting; having De Niro play Louis, a bank robber recently out of jail and addicted to drugs is one thing but resisting casting a young man in the role and resisting having him talkative and naïve in that 'stoner' caricature we could all associate with him is another. If anything, Louis could take the drugs to keep him calm since the instant we see him spending long amounts of time away from the pad and away from the drugs, he becomes very irritable and somewhat dangerous.
Then you have the other 'types' that could so easily have been typecast but people like ATF enforcer Ray Nicolette (Keaton) is more than a typical policeman or agent with a badge and an ego, he wants to help Jackie and at certain points wants to get to know her whilst carrying a certain quirkiness attributed to Keaton's approach to the character. So if Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs were all about breaking down stereotypes in a well worn genre then Jackie Brown is the continuation of this, albeit on a lower scale. The film could fall into crime, possibly even neo-noir and quite possibly romance. There are some blurry lines as to who is playing the protagonist in the noir-inspired sense as bail bondsman Max Cherry (Forster) could clearly be given the 'down on his luck' lead role and Jackie the femme fatale or Cherry could simply be labelled an ally and Jackie (who's equally down on her luck) is the anti-hero playing everyone off against each other. The film is named Jackie Brown after all, but if we can learn anything from the final scene and garner anything from the film overall then it's feasible Max is the best and most interesting character.
Jackie Brown is perhaps the most conventional of Tarantino's films; certainly at the time and certainly with hindsight also. It adopts a straight and linear path that only become complicated when it branches off to show its several primary characters' actions. In terms of manipulating the linear passage of things, Jackie Brown rarely toys with formula until it is absolutely necessary to drop the viewer into chaos of the mind as they frantically backtrack and work out who's where and why they might be. This is done during the most important scene in the film and feels like the climactic heist as everything comes together and fits into place but really, Tarantino is using it as a set up for the bigger picture; the attempted acquiring of a gun runner.
At the core of the film is a strong female character and how often can you come away saying there is such a thing in a film that contains gun runners; stoners and could quite feasibly fall into the noir genre? Incidentally when Max first sees Jackie, played by Pam Grier, leaving the jail house his look is constructed around the gaze theory but one thing I noticed that may be deliberate by Tarantino is that she isn't fetishised or presented in an objective fashion. This is down to two things; firstly Tarantino places her about two dozen feet away from the watching Max and secondly, given the dystopian locale of the jail house we've previously been presented with, Jackie has this aura about her that does not demand an attractive labelling. She is a mess, with scraggly hair; well worn clothes; air miles under her belt for that particular day and generally unglamorous.
Following her brush with death at the hands of gunrunner Ordell Robbie (Jackson), who is equally brilliantly set up in all his ruthless glory, the film divulges into the seedy world of apartments bought with blood money, malls, mall car parks and police station offices. The splashes of Tarantino are evident in random flashes of violence; eventual non-linear story telling and a mock cartoon bird's eye view of a flight from Mexico to America. The soundtrack of light, mellow love songs adds a depth to Jackie Brown as Max gently eases his way into feeling for the woman as the meetings escalate between the two. The manner in which each character is fleshed out in their own retrospect's and the efficiency of most scenes involving Jackson's Ordell Robbie as well as Cherry's gradual relationship with Brown are some of the reasons Jackie Brown goes down as and will remain as one of my favourite films.