Nicely Crafted.

Rating: 8/10 (3 November 2004)

SPOILERS.
A true original, and the director's best.
The influence of Quentin Tarrantino is ubiquitous and obvious, and I'm not sure that's entirely a good thing. Every popular style, no matter how original, prompts imitation until originality becomes cliché. Look at what happened to Hitchcock. I won't bother to spell out the ingredients of this particular style except to mention in passing cross-racial aggregations, plenty of obscenities, crime, diversionary discussions of things like hamburgers, unexpected explosions of blood, and an underlying feeling that what ought to be tragic is really ridiculously funny.
All of those ingredient can be found in "Jackie Brown," a very well executed (and complicated) crime story. The acting has to be good, and it is. Samuel Jackson is outstanding as a ghetto-type gun broker worried about his half million dollars. What a job he does! He switches from cool to threatening in a second. And when he is exasperated, which is about half the time, his eyes pop in disbelief and his voice cracks and toggles into the upper register like a coloratura soprano's.
Everyone else is equally good, although their roles may not call for that kind of razzle dazzle. Robert Forster hasn't been seen often on the screen lately. He's introduced here in a kind of crabwise manner in a part that at first seems like it may be nothing more than a featured bit. He'd make a good utility player.
Pamela Greer is simply fine. She glides between standard English and ghetto register with ease. She's not the staggering beauty that she was in the 1960s but her age is put to good use in this film, savvy but warm. If anyone sounds like a professional actor reciting lines, it's Bridget Fonda, but that's okay because she's supposed to be a hedonistic airhead and besides her long tan legs make up for any real deficiency.
The story itself is kind of intricate, possibly more than it needed to be. The director leaves out a few linking scenes that might have reduced any confusion we feel about what's going on. As it is, I lost track of the money sometimes amid the comings and goings. No wonder Michael Keaton, my co-star in "The Squeeze," was left scratching his head.
And if the direction is a bit derivative, it at least respects the viewer without indulging the genius of the director himself. There is one scene that is seen at different times from three separate points of view, but the tactic is used to clarify the events. Basically the plot unfolds logically, with just enough time taken to explore some of the principal characters.
You'll probably enjoy it.