Continuing with Quentin Tarantino films, today it's 1997's Jackie Brown turn. The movie was the aftermath of the tremendous success Tarantino had with his previous 1994 Pulp Fiction, a movie that spawned a huge cultural fever for the retro B movies that lasts until today. I myself, was completely blown away by Pulp Fiction, and Natural Born Killers, both movies told me "fuck your current movie taste, go back to the 70's and fuck yourself with astonishing exploitation movies"
Master Quentin Tarantino is one of the few filmmakers that will adapt a novel
by a popular old school novelist like Elmore Leonard,
whose books are famous for not being adapted into very good movies (aren't all books turned into not very good big screen adaptations?),
twist it into a blaxploitation homage, change the settings and a few
things about the characters, and make it probably the best adaptation ever made
of that author's work. Tarantino has
that way of charmingly ruffling up other people's work and making it
his own and somehow getting us to love it. Jackie Brown is a wonderful movie.
the lead cast.
Jackie Brown goes vector style.
Pam Grier, Blaxploitation legend.
However, this is inarguably Tarantino's least appreciated film. This is something
like saying Spicy Kraft mayonaisse is not as tasty as the original Kraft mayonaisse, because all of Mr. Tarantino films are highly appreciated, just like Kraft mayonaisse varieties. If you disagree with me on this, I gotta tell you his movies are looked at by
incredible amounts of people as ingenious, groundbreaking cinema.
However, Jackie Brown is not mentioned as often, it's not quoted
constantly, it doesn't have a following, and it's not on IMDb's Top
250, where Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and the Kill Bills have their
places. I think it deserves more recognition than it gets. l think that
the reason it's his least appreciated film is frankly because it's not
soaked in blood and it's a battle wits more than weapons. Even though I
love blood-soaked gorefests, highlights of such a kind of film being
those other four Tarantino films, I think it's awfully shallow to
expect such a narrow criteria from such a brilliant filmmaker like him,
leaving his other efforts in the shadows. Jackie Brown has a lot to
offer: One of the finest ensemble casts I've ever seen, Tarantino's
trademark salt-of-the-earth dialogue ("Beaumont ain't got a doin'- time
kind of disposition..."), a roller-coaster rush of a soundtrack
including forcibly head-bobbing 1970s funk with unforgettable
highlights like Bobby Womack's Across 110th Street and The Brothers
Johnson's Strawberry Letter #23, and a clever con game that is slowly
unraveled.
Bridget Fonda's rounded ass.
Bridget Fonda's perfect ass.
Pam Grier, queen of blaxploitation.
Jackson ignites the screen with his infectious and eternally memorable
portrayal of Ordell Robie, the perfect opposite to his Jules Winnfield.
He's an eccentric who doesn't realize it, a nearly laughable
pseudo-badass-businessman exterior, but with a cold-hearted interior
quietly ahead of everyone else, a clever double-sided mastermind.
Grier naturally gives off that down-home, unsophisticated streetwise
woman-trying-to- make-it feeling in the movie's title heroine,
especially early on when we're just coming to know her as a character
and she's not saying much, tired from nights spent in jail, just
wanting a drink and a smoke and to go home, but knowing something about
her situation isn't adding up. We learn to love her not just as a
badass black chick in a suit with a gun, but as a middle-aged woman
trying to cling to that semblance of a life she has and taking such
risks to beat the odds.
They're watching "La Belva Col Mitra"
Holy bombshell.
a Concerned man.
One surprise in Jackie Brown is the presence of Robert De Niro. It
seems appropriate that Tarantino, someone who so embraces the crime
genre and having done so much with Harvey Keitel, should cast De Niro
as a seasoned career scumbag, the staple of his tremendous career. The
surprise is that he plays the character down, which is so rare for him
to do. Usually, De Niro takes a character and plays him up, making him
a bigger, tougher, more brazen and bombastic character, sometimes just
a little bit and sometimes a lot. Jackie Brown is a departure from the
majority of his other work. His character shares a lot of the same
traits as most of De Niro's other tough guys and crooks, but his
disposition is so different. It makes this one of his most intriguing
performances.
Those who've overlooked this gem, buried in all the hype of Tarantino's
other classics, you're really really missing out.Besides this movie does hide some very interesting exploitation references such as the italian exploitation classic "La Belva Col Mitra" that can be seen on the TV screen at Ordell's.
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