Tarantino does well.
Tarantino gets compared to Orson Welles. After all, both were young men when they made their indeligible stamps on the cinema with Pulp, Tarantino's second movie, and Citizen Kane, which was Welles' first movie. Welles followed Kane with The Magnificent Ambersons, a story about a family set in turn of the century America. It's a very good, but not stunning motion picture.
I say the same for Jackie Brown. Tarantino adapts Rum Punch, a novel, to the screen and does a good job of it. There is the Tarantino-brand dialogue to give your ears something to genuinely appreciate listening to, but it's not near as prevalent as Pulp's. This movie has much more styrofoam dialogue. The story moves along fairly well, but at a running time of 2:35, Brown could've used some judicious editing.
Story as has to do with middle-aged airline stewardess, Pam Grier, who runs money for gunrunner Samuel Jackson. She is nailed by the ATF, who's played by Michael Keaton and some nondescript dude. Grier decides to play both sides against the middle by screwing the ATF and Jackson out of the half million which she couriers from Mexico.
Add Robert DeNiro as an aged con and Bridget Fonda as a stoner beach bimbo as more archetypes (if you like the flick) or cliches (if you want to put the flick down). After all, it's amazing how one person's bitch is another person's glossover. Attitude is what decides it--are you out to praise the flick or damn it?
Jackie Brownis vaguely like The Killing, a very early Stanley Kubrick movie. Both flicks had to do with the heist of a large amount of money. Both had to find a way to get the huge wad of cash out and about with no one the wiser. Both movies present the same sequence from several viewpoints to show how various characters dealt with their key parts in the key scene. Both have buku characters coming to untimely ends.
The acting is OK. Grier has a helluva comeback role and does well. Jackson is a rheumy-eyed Superfly who feels he can get by with his badass stare and pass it off as acting. Fonda, DeNiro, and Keaton do their parts about as well as can be expected. No fuss, no muss.
Tarantino has nothing to be ashamed with Jackie Brown. It's no failure, but it's no Pulp Fiction. He surely has more terrific flicks to write and direct in the years ahead.
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