As an opening salvo for two of
the film’s main characters, it’s a goofy bit of comedic jesting, a callback to
the Jackson-John Travolta bull session at the opening of Pulp Fiction, and a self-referential stab at the romanticism of
violence and pop culture junkiedom that lie at the heart of Tarantino’s film
(and which are often the main criticisms lobbed his way.) But this smidge of
dialogue also provides some key context for the time that helped to spawn this
2.5 hour character study of a crime drama. In the grand scheme of Tarantino’s
filmic oeuvre, Jackie Brown stands as
an intriguing sidebar, one which provides a glimpse into an alternate direction
in which his career might have progressed.
As QT was directing Pulp Fiction (which captured so much of
the post-modern, ironic GenX sensibility that was becoming a standard in the
early ‘90s), another wildly influential cultural marker was embedding itself on
the pop consciousness. For a period in the first half of the decade, the
nascent Hong Kong Action genre was the hottest thing going in the then-potent
U.S. underground film scene. Magazines like Film
Threat devoted copious space to chronicling the transgressive thrills in
films that, in a pre-internet era, were hard to see outside of bootleg VHS
tapes. Art houses across the country hosted retrospectives featuring recent wire
work epics and hyper-violent bullet ballets.
At the heart of this genre
explosion was John Woo, the superstar director of A Better Tomorrow, Hard
Boiled, and the aforementioned The
Killer. His crime sagas were a reinvention of the noir cycle on par with
the French New Wave tough guys films of Jean-Pierre Melville, with impossibly
cool leading men (particularly the iconic Chow Yun Fat) blazing their way
through a morally conflicted world awash with cigarette smoke and dual pistol
standoffs. And doves. Lots of doves. Woo was an arch-stylist through and
through, and the neon lighting, atmospheric shafts of light, and symbolic birds
of freedom that populated his landscapes brought a poetic weight to the
proceedings.
Ironically, by the time Woo’s
films gained greater exposure in the States, the Triad film genre was already
in decline, slowly being replaced by another wave of wire work films. But they
still seemed radical and fresh to domestic audiences. The hip hop world, in
particular, latched onto the genre in a massive way, aping the stoic, badass
signifiers of Woo and company in their style and lyrics. The most notable
purveyors of this influence were the rap superstar collective The Wu-Tang Clan,
who took their moniker from a 1983 Gordon Liu action film and peppered their
tracks with samples and soundbites from the burgeoning Honk Kong filmic arena.
Always the inveterate, voracious
cinephile, Tarantino had latched onto this Asian New Wave early on, a fandom
that was bolstered by the access he enjoyed during his tenure at the famed
Video Archives. You can see some of the classic Hong Kong cinema themes at play
in his first two films: loyalty, respect, the codes by which warriors live, the
ritualization of violence. And as was becoming evident by this point in his
career, he also held a deep appreciation for black culture, especially the Blaxploitation
genre so popular in ‘70s grindhouses. Jackie
Brown would see the fullest realization to date of QT’s affinity for this
dual cultural imperative in its loose, weed-infused mood.
And it would see this realization
through his adaptation of Elmore Leonard, the poet laureate of Detroit crime
fiction, whose hard-boiled books are populated by the kind of eccentric
criminals, wild card elements, and an intense love of language that seem right
at home in the Tarantinoverse. In Leonard’s Rum
Punch, QT saw the same talky crooks that lent his previous two films their
dark, vital heart. But he also saw something more, the chance to build a
narrative around two decidedly more non-criminal types floating around this
world of thieves, both trying to make their way to a better life. And he saw
the chance to resurrect the careers of two of his favorite actors.
If John Travolta often served as
the young Tarantino’s avatar of cool, then Blaxploitation queen Pam Grier was
his inspiration, his crush, and his template for femininity. Since her ‘70s
heyday, Grier had never really gone away, but she was a long way from her most
famous roles in Foxy Brown, Coffy, Black Mama, White Mama,
et al. Much like Richard Roundtree, she had been pigeonholed as a sub-genre
action star, which ignored the authoritative presence, knowing wit, and emotional
depth that she often brought to roles. Being able to use his newfound Hollywood
clout to make his next film a Grier vehicle was a dream come true for QT. Once
again, the lazy narrative might have pegged this as nostalgic stunt casting,
but like Travolta’s turn in Pulp,
this was a case where a somewhat forgotten star was the perfect choice for the
character. Unfortunately, Grier’s career didn’t match the resurgence that came
to Travolta; Hollywood tends to marginalize women over 40…or, these days, over
30. Nonetheless, her work in this film is tremendous. Uma Thurman may have
electrified Pulp, but it was still very much a man’s man’s man’s world. Grier’s
Jackie is still beset by the wills and whims of the male-dominated war between
cops and criminals, but she more than holds her own, ultimately outsmarting all
of them to deliver herself from the middle-aged morass of her flight stewardess
life. She’s the first truly alpha-female presence in a Tarantino film, and it
can be argued that after two features in which men must rely on their
resourcefulness to find redemption, Jackie
Brown finds a similar crew of men helpless before the titular female.
One of those men who ultimately
finds himself in thrall to Jackie’s charms is career bail bondsman Max Cherry,
played with stoic aplomb by Robert Forster. Another favorite of Tarantino’s
youth, Forster was the very definition of a working actor, gaining some
notability in Disney’s space epic The
Black Hole and the sewer horror thriller Alligator, but otherwise never reaching even the temporary level of
fame that Grier achieved. The budding romance between Max and Jackie forms the
tender heart of this film; looking back at it today, the casting of two
middle-aged actors in these roles in a Tarantino film seems positively
subversive. Forster doesn’t carry the pyrotechnic presence of Pulp’s leading men, but Max requires an
actor who can wear the weight of the years in far subtler fashion. And this is
where Forster excels, communicating a world-weary humor and sadness throughout,
his furrowed brow indicative of a life spent witnessing all manner of
malfeasance, his deep stare a well of regret for the life he might have had.
From a purely objective
standpoint, Samuel L. Jackson and Robert De Niro are the two megastars in this
film, even though they’re supporting players to the Jackie/Max story. Both
actors give some of the finest performances of their careers, playing against
type in fascinating ways. De Niro’s Louis is all comedic shrugs and bemused
reactions, a man lost in the real world after four years in the clink. But that
confused stoner demeanor hides a raging frustration that finally explodes when
he kills Bridget Fonda’s Melanie in a fit of rage after the money exchange at
the Del Amo Fashion Place. It’s a shocking bit of violence to this day, made
all the more powerful by the relatively monotone character build that comes
before. It’s also a deeply troubling moment that forces the audience to
question whether they should laugh or gasp. That dynamic was at play with much
of Jackson’s role as Jules in Pulp
Fiction, and the same feeling permeates his role here as well. That opening
discussion of guns and their cultural cache always elicits laughs from an
audience, but while Jules is ultimately revealed to be a morally motivated
person who has spent a lifetime putting on malevolent airs to serve as the
tyranny of evil men, Ordell is a stone cold psychopath who wears a mask of
conviviality to lure in his victims. In the film’s climactic scene, in which
Ordell threatens Max before their meeting with Jackie, the look in Jackson’s
eyes is pure cold, calculating menace, a moral vacuum at the heart of the plot.
Watching Jackie Brown today is as interesting an experience as it was back
in 1997. I remember seeing it several days after its Christmas Day release,
loving the laid back nature of the plot and the deeply ‘70s haze in which it
seemed to dwell (even though it’s set in the present day.) Of course, the film
was a financial disappointment, and pundits saw it as either a step back for
the boy wonder director or a comeuppance for his sudden mega-stardom. Seen in
the context of his subsequent films, it’s somewhat of an odd duck, an almost
total retreat into the extended conversational world that his previous films
used as backdrop, which creates an overall effect that at times can seem almost
too relaxed. But by the time all is resolved in the final scene, and Jackie and
Max part after a poignant kiss, the collective power of the film really comes
together. We, the audience, have lived with these people for several hours, and
what in the moment might have seemed like minor and incidental details are now
revealed as building blocks in a relationship that is unusually mature, not
just for a crime film but for a major Hollywood product. There’s no melodrama
in their parting, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t get a bit choked up as Max
retreats into the soft focus of the scene’s background (and into his barely
concealed tears) and as the camera focuses on Jackie’s face as she drives away
into her new life, Grier singing along to Bobby Womack’s “Across 110th
Street” (which also opens the film) with a twinge of sadness over leaving one
of the only people in her life who seems to have truly gotten her.
Despite its financial failings, Jackie Brown allowed Tarantino to expand
his dramatic chops in ways that are still interesting. He would hang onto the
narrative of a strong woman beset by grief and regret, using it as a launching
point for his next project, a massive film that would serve as a summation of
his entire career, nay his entire life to this point. It would be five full
years before another QT film would hit theaters, but Kill Bill would prove to be more than worth the wait.
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