Jackie Brown has always held a special place in my heart. It was, in fact, the first Quentin Tarantino film I ever watched.

Deliberately old school, laced with foxy brown vibes and accompanied by a superbly compiled soul rhythm and blues soundtrack, it’s a film so vintage that it was produced when Tarantino’s ‘A Band Apart Films’ production company was still in action.

Another reason I’m still burning a candle for Jackie Brown, even after the critical acclaim of Tarantino’s more recent works, is how overlooked it is as one of his great movies. It is, without a doubt, his most underrated film and it annoys me how many so-called Tarantino fangirls are so quick to disregard it in favour of the more widely known ‘Inglorious Bastards’ and ‘Django Unchained’ for instance. This review is my plea to movie lovers everywhere not to rule out the underdog …

Bad guy Ordell (Jackson) is in the business of guns smuggling and keeps the money he has amassed from this venture in a secret holding in Mexico. This is where Jackie Brown (Grier) fits in. She uses her airline connections to transport the money from Mexico back into the US undetected … until she gets caught that is. Facing a stint behind bars if she doesn’t talk to the cops, and potentially life-threatening consequences if she does, Jackie decides the only way out is to play both parties against each other by pulling off the ultimate heist.

Tarantino rarely gets the casting in his movies wrong, and the pairing of Seventies siren Pam Grier with his old buddy Samuel L. Jackson is genius.

Whilst their outlooks on life appear to conflict, the two have more in common than they care to admit. Grier’s character represents a harsh reality concealed behind outward glamour, whilst similarly, Jackson’s Ordell is a pathetic small-time crook with the false bravado of a big time gangster. Both are discontent with their positions in the food chain and have aspirations to be something more.

Ordell has three things on his mind – girls, guns and money. Many talk about Django Unchained as Tarantino’s most obvious blaxploitation venture, but he was exploring that genre long before Jamie Foxx was a household name. In Jackie Brown, this is mostly relayed through Ordell, who talks bitterly of the white man’s game. The irony of the situation of course, is that Ordell is actually the most power hungry and controlling of them all, whether it be taking out ‘a nigga’ to ensure his silence, or using his kind-of girlfriend Melanie to do his bitch work.

He meets his match in Jackie however. She is feisty and streetwise, with an air of old-fashioned class and coolness. Tarantino fuses race with feminism, to expose the limitations of blaxploitation masculinity vs the tenacity of female dominance.

Light is an important prop often used to distinguish between the two leads. During a scene in Jackie’s apartment with her and Ordell, darkness eclipses the moments where Ordell appears to be in control, whilst the light returns when Jackie turns it back around on him.

Jackie oozes sex appeal, which has an almost spell-binding effect on every male she comes into contact with. For starters, she is the only woman who manages to control Ordell (the rest of the ‘bitches’ in his life are all kept ones, allowing him to be the boss). She also succeeds in keeping the cops, who force her to agree to a sting operation to set up Ordell, in check, setting her own terms from the outset. Then there is Max Cherry, a hard-nosed bail bondsman turned lovesick puppy over Jackie, who finds himself embroiled in her scheme.

The supporting cast is strong too. De Niro is fantastic as socially awkward Louis, Ordell’s old pal who has recently been released from prison and has ‘that salvation army thing going on’. This is a role that has minimal dialogue, but over the years, De Niro has managed to perfect the art of acting without talking. Louis crushes on his best friends floozy ‘piece of ass’, Melanie, as portrayed with provocativeness and sass by Bridget Fonda.



Chris Tucker also has a blink and miss it cameo, starring as Ordell’s doomed employee Beaumont Livingston. With a name that awesome, he has all the makings to be a great character but sadly is taken out almost as soon as he is introduced.

One common element in the writings of Leonard and Tarantino, is their ability to expose human weakness in all of us. Jackie Brown is basically a compilation of this. There is a particular scene which comes to mind, where Jackie is trying on a suit and imagining herself as a successful businesswoman, only to be brought back down to earth when she catches a glimpse of her washed out reflection in the mirror and remembers the reality of her situation.

For Louis, it is his loss of control when handling Melanie. Max’s is a sexual weakness, provoked by the arrival of Jackie in his life. Even Ordell’s fall from power is noticeable when he begins to suspect that he has been fleeced of all his money and starts phoning around all his criminal friends asking for help, only to receive a deaf ear.

Tarantino favours close-up, lingering solo shots of each individual to emphasise that everybody has their own agenda. This deep delve, almost leisurely paced film-making is a style rarely seen in modern day productions. Recent offering such as ‘Spotlight’ and ‘The Danish Girl’, while both great films, made the mistake of remaining so focused on the storyline itself that they left virtually no room for character development which is so important in creating that fictional bond with the viewer. By staying true to Leonard’s original story, Tarantino managed to create a film with Jackie Brown which allowed audiences to develop an understanding of the characters so deep that it would normally have only be possible from reading about them in print.

At it’s time of release, the follow-up to Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction had been hotly anticipated, but failed to make the impact on the mass market in the same way that his previous two successes had done, and the films he has gone on to make since. BUT WHY?? Jackie Brown has all the elements to make it a movie classic. Great cast, strong female lead, a nasty ass bad guy, comedy, violence, love and hope!

My guess is that it’s mostly down to the fact that it resists the temptation to pander over predictable pop-cultural references or churn out unnecessary violence, which Tarantino’s name has become synonymous with, and instead lets the drama unfold at its own pace. And for the unimaginative Tarantino ‘fan’ who knows nothing pre-Inglorious, this is incomprehensible.

My advice? If you haven’t seen it already, give it a view. It has recently been added to Netflix so there really is no excuse. Especially if you proclaim to be a Tarantino fanatic!