Jackie Brown

Quentin Tarantino is one of the most fascinating filmmakers working today. Sometimes he infuriates me, and his impact on the style of other, lesser directors can be unfortunate, but I'll always be among the first in line to see his pictures. Jackie Brown, his third feature, has sort of been lost in the shuffle, even with his limited filmography. The next picture released after his game-changing classic, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown was perceived as a disappointment. Does it deserve reappraisal?

I saw it on its first released in 1997 and I was among the disappointed. I found it meandering and bloated, not nearly as taut as the Elmore Leonard novel, Rum Punch, that inspired it. Tarantino took the book and made some big changes: he moved the locale from Miami to L.A., and changed the name and race of the lead character, ostensibly to give a big comeback to grindhouse queen Pam Grier. These changes work fine, but Tarantino, perhaps too fat and sassy from the accolades from Pulp Fiction, indulges himself wantonly.

The film centers around the title character, a flight attendant for a third-rate airline that flies from L.A. to Cabo San Lucas. She was busted for smuggling drugs, and thus has to work at the lesser company. She is still involved in illegal activity--she carries cash for gun dealer Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson). Stopped by the police and an ATF agent (Michael Keaton, who would reprise the role in Out of Sight, another Leonard adaptation) she decides to play both sides against the middle, and with the help of her bail bondsman (Robert Forster), she crafts a plan to make off with half of a million dollars.

Much of the charm of Leonard's book is still there, particularly the vivid low-life characters. Jackson is gleefully profane as Ordell, while Rober DeNiro is amusingly bewildered as Ordell's pal who has just been sprung from jail. Bridget Fonda is Jackson's "surfer girl," who does nothing but get high, watch TV, and lounge around in a bikini, but she also has designs of Jackson's money.

The only decent character is played by Forster, whose career was also resurrected by Tarantino, and earned him an Oscar nomination. It's not a flashy performance, but a professional and seemingly effortless one, and it anchors the picture.

What doesn't work? To start with, there's no need for this movie to be two and a half hours long. I wonder what Tarantino would have done if he weren't sitting on a pile of money, and instead was a first-time, lean and hungry director. I think it could have been much sharper and more focused, and less indulgent on his pet themes. We get his foot fetishism, with lingering shots of Fonda's toes, and languid scenes of characters just sitting around talking. There are numerous references to other movies: the opening credits are a nod to The Graduate, with Grier on a people mover at the airport (traveling from right left, even), but instead of hearing Simon and Garfunkel on the soundtrack we hear Bobby Womack's "Across 110th Street," the them song of a staple of the blaxploitation films that Tarantino loves and made Grier famous. There's also a wink with Fonda watching her dad Peter's movie Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry.

But perhaps I'm holding the standards of this film too high. It's no Pulp Fiction, but it has numerous charms. Tarantino is a master of using music--having Jackson listening to Johnny Cash may not be realistic, but it's eye-opening, and his dialogue, with its frequent use of f-bombs and "n" words, is vulgar poetry. It has perhaps cinema's least sexy sex scene (between DeNiro and Fonda) and one of the sexiest chaste kisses (between Grier and Forster). Tarantino also has a marvelous knack for telling a story--in one pivotal scene in a mall, we see it repeated from three different angles. While it pads the length of the picture, I found it necessary and exhilarating, and also makes it clear.

I still think he's wasted his talent, replicating the trashy genres of his youth. Next he's going to make his own version of a spaghetti western, and it will probably be very good. But will it say anything?