Tarantino's best blows away all the Leonard competition

Rating: 10/10 (1 May 2000)

I was put off going to see Jackie Brown in the cinema when it was released. Reading through the lines of the reviews discouraged me.
The critics were damning it with faint praise: terms like "Tarantino has matured", etc. abounded. They appeared to be hedging their bets: it wasn't quite as good as its predecessors, but then maybe it was a grower and we don't want to have to be revising our opinions. It sounded to me like those situations when you've been invited to a dinner and you know your hosts have worked long and hard to produce a quality meal and you never like to say the meal tasted lousy so you allow your tongue to contradict your taste buds.
Having finally got to see it recently, by virtue of a special offer at my local video store, I would not hesitate to give it an unreserved thumbs up. And I would go farther and state unhesitatingly that it is by far the best screen dramatisation of an Elmore Leonard novel.
There was a time in the 1980's when I devoured Elmore Leonard novels.
I loved the combination of wonderfully offbeat characters and violence and comedy which he devised and while he may not be hardbitten enough to compare with the classic hard-bitten stories of Chandler, Hammett, and Cain, I don't believe he ever tried to and he succeeded on his own merits.
But I had begun to despair of them ever being translated properly to the screen (I am not considering his western stories as I am not a fan of western novels, I couldn't comment). Mr. Majestyk seemed more a case of "melon farmer does Death Wish"; a TV version of Glitz was antiseptic; Get Shorty was unfortunately less than the sum of its parts and it did suffer from the handicap of having John Travolta playing the lead role of John Travolta. Yes, the later Out of Sight was stylish and George Clooney did seem to be finding his niche but Steve McQueen had played the best version of The Thomas Crown Affair.
No, Tarantino has done it and perhaps it means he did find time to read books in between bouts of movie-watching.
The story of the washed-up no-hope airline stewardess somehow finding it in her, with the help of a lonely and chivalrous bail bondsman, to outwit both the cops and her violent part-time drug-dealing boss for an unexpected pension bonus is certainly one to appeal to all of us who likes to see the underdog triumph, but it is done with such panache and perfect pacing that you don't feel the 150 minutes or so of screen time pass. And, in fact, you don't want it to end.
And the performances. Robert Forster as the bail-bondsman plays the classic Leonard hero to perfection and Pam Grier is not far behind. (I had certainly recalled Pam Grier from the blaxploitation era and, in view of the long interval, hadn't expected her to be this good.And my one memory of Forster was in Haskell Wexler's "Medium Cool" which he had helped make special but I hadn't recalled much of him since then and this performance certainly topped that. There were many complaints about the De Niro performance and certainly his character was no Travis Bickle. And the role certainly didn't call for one of the top screen actors of his generation. But this was another typical Leonard character: the indolent half-wit who suddenly remembers how he got to where he was: he was, after all, a violent hard-bitten career criminal who is, albeit at unexpected times, required to practice his craft and show how he came to be a violent hard-bitten career criminal. And he did so. Unexpectedly.
You can forgive Tarantino his little indulgences: Samuel L. Jackson's character wasn't too far removed from his role in Pulp Fiction ; the language was a little bit over the top. But while the video clips at the beginning weren't out of the Leonard textbook, they were refreshing and funny (although I'm sure the PC lobby didn't think so). And what a soundtrack! (I was reminded of what an impression the Brothers Johnson sublime "Strawberry Letter 23 made on me the first time I heard it).
I would like to think I'll never tire of watching this one. And I would put it above both its predecessors, which is certainly no bad thing.
So what if Tarantino has matured. We all grow older and wiser. 10 out of 10 (or can this one also go up to 11?) Give that man a Guinness!