no adrenaline kick, but a good caper movie

Rating: 9/10 (20 June 2001)

Since both Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction are my favorite pictures ever, of which many dialogues are imprinted in my brain, I was very curious how Tarantino had filmed Pam Grier. She featured in one of the unforgettable dialogues in Reservoir Dogs and she is obviously an 'old' (pardon me the adjective) hero of Tarantino. 'Jackie Brown' does remind us of the seventies, and the age of the cast helps to bring it about: it is convincing to believe the seventies were good days for them, and that they have held on to the music of those days. Unlike the music of RD and PF, this was not my music, regrettably. Most of it just didn't ring a bell for me. For days I sang 'Little Green Back'(RD) or had the saxophones of PF in my mind and I can go on about this for a while. I can see that if you're a fan of the music in Jackie Brown, this adds a great extra quality. I didn't get the adrenaline kick out of it that I had hoped for. Be this as it may, I still thought it a good movie. The theme of ageing which each character (except maybe the cops) had to deal with assured that I empathized with them. The plot about the money and the question where Jackie's loyalty lied had me in their grip too. I agree with what others have written here about the relationship between Jackie and Cherry: it kept me curious how it would develop. Many images will stick to my mind too. DeNiro rocking his chair while Simone does a Diana Ross act to me is a classic, and thinking back, most of his scenes are. However, I read here that the dialogues were as good as in Tarantino's other movies. This is insane. E.g.,if I compare Jackson's character with his in PF he was good watching here, but in PF his lines (the pre-execution speech, the coffee shop dialogue, the foot massage, etc) were magic. All in all I think the movie is good: 8.5 out of 10. To me Tarantino stays the best director since Hitchcock. With JB he rode two hobby horses (Grier and the music) that are not mine, nor were the dialogues as great as in his 2 classics, but it was a feast for the eyes and a very enjoyable movie nonetheless.