It's definitely his best film and my personal favourite.
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TMC-4 — 10 years ago(January 17, 2016 11:18 PM)
http://lebeauleblog.com/2015/10/23/worst-to-first-ranking-elmore-leonard-adaptations/8/
- Jackie Brown (1997)
Summary:
Low-paid flight attendant Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) gets busted by the cops and the feds at LAX for carrying money and drugs in for gunrunner Ordell Robbie (Samuel L Jackson). With the help of bail bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster) she comes up with a plan to fool the cops and steal Ordells money so she can start fresh without having to work for him.
Whats Good:
An engrossing story. Superb chemistry between Grier and Forster. An entertaining performance by Jackson and great supporting work from Robert De Niro, Bridget Fonda and Michael Keaton. Superb music. Quentin Tarantino understands what makes Leonard novels work.
Whats Bad:
Some people might find it overly long. I dont.
Quote:
Now sooner or later, theyre gonna get around to offering me a plea deal, and you know that. Thats why you came here to kill me.
Verdict:
Its a superb Leonard adaptation and a hint at a more mature direction that Tarantino might have taken. Definitely the king of the Leonard adaptations.
http://whatculture.com/film/quentin-tarantino-ranking-his-films-from-worst-to-best.php/8
Still the directors most undervalued film, Jackie Brown, a mash-up of hard-boiled 40s Noir and 70s Blaxploitation, is Tarantino straightest work; heavy in his tropes and references and touchstones, but ultimately a more classical work than the rest of his oeuvre, one far more concerned with narrative and resolution than it is any kind of timeline-fracturing chicanery (though, as is Noir, the plot is convoluted, and there is an instance towards the films close where the timeline is tampered with momentarily) or off-topic discourse.
70s Blaxploitation queen, Pam Grier, is the eponymous JB, and her entrance is the coolest in all of Tarantino, the star tracked along a travellator (in a nod to The Graduate) to the sound of Bobby Womacks Across 110th Street. Its a great way to open a movie, and Jackie Brown only gets better; not quite as heavy in Tarantino moments but just altogether more satisfying as an overall, complete film.
It helps that Brown is one of the great QT characters, and her kind-of romance with Max Cherry, played by cult B-movie star Robert Forster, here nominated for an Academy Award, is one of the most touching, believable relationships in the directors entire body of work. Tarantinos characters, as established in The Hateful Eight, are now becoming caricatures, acted by stars well aware that they are in a Quentin Tarantino film. Not so in Jackie Brown, where Grier and Cherry are genuine in a way thats becoming increasingly rare in the directors work.
- Jackie Brown (1997)
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Reznik_T — 10 years ago(January 19, 2016 04:21 PM)
You're not crazy at all. I'll still rank Pulp Fiction as no 1 (for me the best movie of all time), but right after that comes Jackie Brown. Actually JB is the one movie of QT that I can watch the most often without becoming bored with it. It's just such a good movie with great cinematography, dialogues, acting and good story that it's simply a pleasure to watch. I especially love De Niro, Bridget Fonda and Samuel L. Jackson in this movie.
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dwfyfe1 — 10 years ago(February 03, 2016 03:04 PM)
You're not crazy. I've been saying for years that JB is my favorite QT film. Here are mine in order of preference:
Jackie Brown
Pulp Fiction
Inglourious Basterds
Reservoir Dogs
Kill Bill Vol 2
Kill Bill Vol 1
Django Unchained
Death Proof
Have yet to see Hateful Eight. -
The_Dougster — 10 years ago(February 29, 2016 04:39 PM)
I don't think you guys are crazy for thinking it's Tarantino best but I don't agree. I found the plot rather boring and was kind of distracted at seeing an actor of De Niro's status playing such an insignificant role. Also, while I like Samuel L. Jackson, I found Ordell's appearance (the hair & goatee) rather odd.
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drew1116 — 9 years ago(July 04, 2016 12:37 AM)
"I don't think you guys are crazy for thinking it's Tarantino best but I don't agree. I found the plot rather boring and was kind of distracted at seeing an actor of De Niro's status playing such an insignificant role. Also, while I like Samuel L. Jackson, I found Ordell's appearance (the hair & goatee) rather odd."
This sums it up for me as well. It dragged in parts and really doesn't even come close to Pulp Fiction in my opinion. However, I did enjoy it, but I really can't imagine myself watching it again any time soon. PF, on the other hand, I could watch daily, lol. -
The_Dougster — 9 years ago(July 04, 2016 08:54 PM)
You hear me talkin, hillbilly boy? I aint through with you by a
damn
sight. Im gonna get
medieval
on your ass.
I gotta watch that movie again. Just when I think I'm sick of seeing it over and over again, I start jonesin' for some of that kick-ass dialogue! -
dwellman21 — 9 years ago(August 10, 2016 09:43 PM)
Naw, you're not. It's the only film of his where I actually found myself giving a damn about the characters and what was going on with any of them.
And you've hit on something that keeps me from liking Tarantino with the sound bytes critique; so many of the long-winded speeches and monologues he keeps doing seem like he's just trying to recapture the lightning in a bottle that was Samuel L. Jackson's star-making performance in Pulp Fiction, but with these efforts come the sacrifice of genuine character development or a reason for more to care. It's like they come to screeching halts to go "Hey, hey, watch thisthis is the scene you're going to be quoting to your friends."
If anyone if familiar with a Youtuber called NerdWriter1, he did a video about Zack Snyder (in relation to Batman vs. Superman), and the gist of it was that Snyder's main problem is that he's more concerned with creating
"moments"
in his films more than he is about creating an altogether good movie, stringing a multitude of great scenes to compliment and build off one another and LEAD UP to those great movie moments that we all remember years and years later. To its credit even though I'm not much of a fan of it, Pulp Fiction actually did do that fairly well (again, hence why we all remember Sam Jackson's scene). Most his other films? Not so much, at least not for me.
Then there's Jackie Brown, which isn't a movie with that many "memorable quotes" that you could drop anywhere and people would get the reference, but I felt like this was a movie where his "small talk leading into more pertinent story information" style of dialogue writing really worked the best. It gave the movie a grounded sense of realness and reality and relatability that gave me a great picture of all the major characters in here. It wasn't focused on doing any kewl shots or dropping a bunch of references to make all the film geeks go "OOO I KNOW WHERE THAT'S FROM!", it just tells a nice, tight, interesting story.
It's a shame that people didn't respond to this movie as much as the others, because I feel like this was a film that really showed Tarantino maturing as a director, and if he kept on this path he could've been on David Mamet levels of must-see (must-read?) writing on display. Nowadays, I know what I'm going to get out of an (overlong) Tarantino film, so I don't really even bother with them anymore. -
Suriname86 — 9 years ago(August 23, 2016 06:27 PM)
No, it's not just you. People don't appreciate "Jackie Brown" because a) it's not as flashy as Tarantino's other movies and b) it may just be me but I remember the trailers being a bit dull and c)let's be honest: it got labeled a "black movie" when it came out which didn't attract a lot of viewers.