Jackie Brown

Funky Willingness

Jackie Brown begins with the title character moving on an airport walkway. While she’s standing and moving at the same time, the song Across 110^th Street is playing, not in the background, but in the foreground. It’s pressed right against our ears just as all the rest of the music in the film is. The music acts as the characters’ motivation—it’s their walking music. While Jackie continues to move on that belt, the titles for the film appear over her in true black exploitation style. The difference here is not just that Pam Grier has gotten older (she still looks great) but that this is an exploitation scene done by a white man.

It makes sense then that the director who’s pulling this off is none other than Quentin Tarantino. I think that an audience might be baffled during this opening credits movement mainly because the question pops up, when has Tarantino ever been this pro-feminine? If anything, I was feeling confused since I felt that Tarantino was great at being pro-male and macho. In Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, it seemed that he had mastered a cheap art—the threatening man picture. He made those movies with real grit. That’s something that really has never been done before, or at least not to the extent at which Tarantino tackled it. Nonetheless, these were very male pictures. I at first could not believe the opening for Jackie Brown. Then I thought back to Pulp Fiction and his choice for casting Bunny in the heist sequence. Amanda Plummer was his choice. This actress is a very mature woman who also appears to be a little crazy in all her roles. That’s her brilliance—she’s a little bit more real than most actresses. A truly scary performer who also happens to be brilliant, she fit in perfectly in Pulp Fiction. I got the title sequence at that point since it then seemed to me that Tarantino really does understand women. I also got why he chose this sequence for his opening—it was shocking not just for the audience but also for his fans.

Jackie Brown marks a turning point in Quentin’s career. Not only does he sustain this energetic womanly feeling throughout the whole film, but he has also stepped into new ground. This is his first mature movie. And I do not mean that the young audience will not get it; I just feel that not only does he understand women but he understands grown- ups as well. These characters become exciting on the screen, just like the characters in Bonnie and Clyde and Dog Day Afternoon became exciting. This is a heist movie in the best sense. That grittiness that helped Tarantino on his first two features, most likely helped him tremendously to adapt Elmore Lenord’s Rum Punch to the screen. He not only goes into this world of characters and brings them to the screen—he embellishes and makes them his own.

The change of the main characters race shows a wild embellishment; Jackie Brown is a black airline stewardess who doesn’t make a whole lot of money. The fact that the character is changed from a white woman (the way it was done in the book) into a black woman, was most likely for the reason of casting Pam Grier. Quentin has wanted to work with her for years. However, I think there is more to this decision then most fans of the book may realize. By changing the characters race, perhaps Quentin felt that she would be more interesting then if a white actress were used. Besides, it would bring some life to the piece that a regular white noir story might not have. I know it sounds shallow, but I think it’s a brilliant type of shallow that only movies can posses. Movies are the one form of art where adaptation is a key to its survival. Screenwriters run out of ideas fairly quickly; they need books to fuel their art. That doesn’t mean that that writer will faithfully follow the plot elements from the book that he is adapting. Jackie Brown does not suffer from changing the main characters race. I think it’s actually a rarity; this act does not take anything away from the book, but at the same time flaws are apparent in the conception.

Pam Grier is better here then she has been in years. You can see that she feels young and alive playing this part. Certain scenes stay in the mind: Jackie with Max (Robert Forrester), her bail bondsman who also becomes a friend, when they are in her small dinky house; it’s a quirky black woman’s place decorated like it was situated in the seventies. The rarity in Jackie’s comment about Max’s coffee that she is making, “Might be a little black.” is such a nice detail. That line, both the way it’s written and delivered will always stay in my mind.

Jackie with Ordell, (Samuel L. Jackson), her person that she delivers cocaine to so he can then deliver it to someone else, meet in a distinctive bar called the Cockatoo Lounge. He finds out from her that she’s messing up his original plan of getting half a million dollars in a deal. She went to the ATF after they picked her up from shipping some of Ordell’s cocaine. She complied with their wishes and told them that not only was it Ordell that gave her the cocaine, but also that he has half a million coming in and that she will be picking up at the Del Amo Mall. The new plan Jackie tells Ordell, is that she will tell the two detectives who plan to get him that they will do a test run where only 10,000 dollars will be given to a woman in a shopping mall bag. By doing this they can see how Ordell usually gets his money, so when the real time comes—the half a million is being given to that same girl—then the ATF will follow her to Ordell. Meanwhile, Jackie will give the real money (the other bag is a fake) to another one of Ordell’s women. It seems that Ordell has a regular harem around. What’s so right in the scene of Jackie explaining her plan is that Ordell keeps his cool. You think this menace would be pissed having a woman tell him what to do. Instead, he goes along with the plan but not before asking her if she gets in on the deal. She feels she should get at least 15 percent since she is his manager. He says she’s only going to get 10 percent and after much arguing about the subject, she agrees. I think if it were not for Sam Jackson and the way he responds to her orders, we would never believe that Pam Grier is his manager. He makes her respond in a way where you hear her jive talk come out. He really gets her mad for a second or two. It’s her funky willingness to survive that makes her respond so strongly. This scene really works between the two players; actually all the scenes between Sam Jackson and Pam Grier work well since two black talents are coming together. It’s like putting two of the same atoms together—they understand each other all too well. In one scene in Jackie’s place, she’s yelling her orders at Ordell. No one can get away at yelling at a threatening man the way Pam Grier can. When she starts giving her orders, memories of her past roles come to mind. You remember how much fun she gave you. Even if you were a white person, you dug her authority. You could even laugh at it in joy.

The problem with the performance is the moment when you realize that you miss the old Pam Grier. Even though the movies were worse then this one, she was stronger. Maybe the trash elements helped her performance in more ways than we can imagine. She really gave you the spooks and you loved her. Tarantino, casting a very well written part for Grier has gotten rid of the trash elements—it’s all in order to make her performance better, yet we’re missing what made her so much fun. When Jackie tells Max her real plan, to really give the fake bag to Ordell so she can keep the money (she plans to get Max involved by giving him the real money) air seems to go out of the movie. Jackie’s gazing into the camera when she says her true feelings—her real plan—makes you want to cringe. Besides, why would she want to get involved with Max anyway? He’s such a bore. Robert Forrester is being acclaimed in the press; everyone’s saying how he comes away with the best performance. I don’t believe that. He’s definitely a sweet guy in this movie; his willingness to help Jackie is touching. But he always reminds me of that other supposed “great” actor Gregory Peck. These are always the actors who play the true characters; the ones who are always the up standing citizens. They always have to be perfect. It’s not that Forrester’s performance is bad; neither was Peck’s in most of his pictures. It’s that he has to be so passively perfect, as if passivity were the right characteristic for a person. Jackie sure isn’t passive; she tells her plan to anyone who will listen and we like her more for it. Robert Forrester’s balding spot is his saving grace.

The images in the film are brilliant, when they seem planned. At one point, Ordell is giving Melanie, one of his girls played by Bridget Fonda, his menacing look telling her that she has to answer his phone. The beach that is shown behind him is so beautiful, it’s made tactile. Other images are not so lucky. Especially the ones around Jackie, where you feel that the camera is a dead weight around her. Maybe this was a way for Quentin to try to make Grier look stunning, but there was no need for that—she’s already supplying the looks. There are also problems of construction, but these are understandable. They are the complicated plot points, made so formidable that you are not allowed to laugh at them. There’s only one moment when Tarantino allows you to—the first money exchange section is titled Money Exchange—trial run. When the real exchange happens, the title for the section is Money Exchange—for real this time.

Despite those defects, the rest of the movie is a triumph. Tarantino has a real great troupe of actors working for him here. You can see how excited all of them are to be in a Tarantino movie, saying Tarantino lines. But I don’t think I got as much surprise from the other actors as I did from De Niro. This is not to say that his is the best performance in the film (and it’s not) but the surprise of seeing him come through in this way was for me exciting. De Niro really has not come through in at least a decade. I think I know why. His passivity in the 80’s and 90’s was different from Robert Forrester’s. He took great joy in being passive; an actors type of exhilaration. He would craft “great” performances, in parts of him playing depressed, dispirited characters. He got so much into these roles that not only did we become depressed watching him, he also became dispirited. He was running out of breath. That doesn’t mean that he’s not breathing heavily in this picture (At one point Melanie offers him a hit off her bong, when he accepts, he smokes it and then starts coughing and panting; afterwards he says to her that he’s getting old.), he just doesn’t take it as seriously. His poor white man red neck role is perfected here; he’s allowing us to laugh at him, which he did not let us do in Jackknife. You’re allowed to laugh at his method acting. There’s a tribute to Taxi Driver, and a De Palma split screen effect is used. As usual, we see Tarantino’s love for 70’s movies. But what makes him original is he’s using that love for his 90’s essay. When the title appears Del Amo Mall—Torrance California—largest indoor mall in the world, and as your reading it you hear the bland mall music in the background, you know he’s using that title mockingly. He’s looking down on all those people who spend all day at the mall and shop like mad. But Tarantino also loves the 90’s and he respects those shoppers. When the trial run happens and Max watches the money like a hawk, his amusement and thrill at seeing that the plan could work is then amplified by the mall music. The music becomes louder and we actually like what we’re listening to; the part that’s used anyway. It’s a brilliantly worked out series of shots; it shows the fun that can be had at a mall. Tarantino also loves the 90’s surfer girl Melanie. Bridget Fonda is the funky white woman. Tarantino infuses her with a lot of quirky attributes. Fonda also helps. She plays the evil white woman with real deviltry. She may not be Amanda Plummer, that scary/brilliant performer, but that’s ok.

There should be more of Michael Keaton. He plays one of the detectives on Ordell’s tail. His baffled sort of disappointed look (which is probably what much of the audience gets when they watch this picture. I definitely heard groans) is so great that you want more of it. Same goes for the other detective played by Micheal Bowen. He provides some nice touches to his role including his sharp chin which looks a lot like Tarantino’s. The best performance that comes out of this picture is Samuel Jackson’s and that’s no shock. He is an actor that always comes up with the best performances when he is at his blackest. Ordell is the perfect role for him. What makes Ordell so interesting to an audience is how funny he is. There’s more to the laughter; an audience loves to fear him. What’s so great about Samuel Jackson in Jackie Brown is the fact that he becomes scarier as the picture moves along. He intensifies and blows the rest of the stars away, both literally and figuratively. He’s a menace. The young actor Chris Tucker also gives the film good vibes. I always felt that he was Eddie Murphy done better; here he proves it. When Sam Jackson and Chris Tucker talk, their banter may seem offensive. There’s a lot of the use of the n- word here. There is justification for it since its two black men saying it to each other. Who are they trying to offend? More then that, Tarantino likes the way they talk. He’s anything but a racist. When at one point Jackson and Tucker go to a car and Jackson hands him a gun to point at some guys, Tucker’s response made me laugh out loud so hard I almost fell out of my chair. His response is, “You catch your n- off guard with this s-!”

The outrageousness probably offends some people (it shouldn’t), but why don’t the offended admit that there was not a whole lot of violence in this picture—it’s hidden. At the same time the violence is shocking. Maybe George Lucas can learn a thing or two about not showing blood. The violence that is in this picture is a brilliant use of trash. Its such good trash that you don’t want anymore of it. Although I do want more trash in general in the movie. Not the violent forms, but the funny lines and shots and ideas. Yes, there are a boat load of them, but not like in Pulp Fiction which was a cornucopia of trash. The movie needs more of that; that’s why sometimes Pam Grier seems so smug in the film.

You can feel the energy that went into the cinematography. The film was shot by Guillermo Navarro, and parts of the movie, like when Jackie at the beginning walks through the airport that she works at, have a real soiled look. The film has basically the same look as From Dusk Till Dawn, which was shot by the same cinematographer, but this film’s different. This material is not the pulp that From Dusk Till Dawn was. That movie was trash taken overboard. Still I wanted more trash. Maybe this is why the audience is so confused. They don’t know what they want from a Tarantino movie anymore; it either has to be a grown up movie or a trashy movie; it can’t be both. I wish they learned that both elements con co-exist in a work, because they are missing out on a brilliant film.

They’re even missing out on the best sustained sequence that Tarantino has ever filmed. This is the Money Exchange—for real this time section which really gets an audience member enthralled while watching. The great R and B song Street Life is being played while Jackie and Max (going in separate cars) are meeting up at the mall. The camera shots showing them in profile complement their looks. Not only that, but it also heightens Forrester and Pam. They become living marquee-billboard stars. Ordell does not have that satisfaction. While the song is spelling out Jackie’s character, we in the audience do not have time to the think about that—we’re just watching a beautiful aging goddess and loving her and the shots she’s in. Then the section has its scarier side to it. Once Jackie switches the money, she walks out of the dress department that she was in, and walks in a panic. We’re reminded of an earlier scene with Jackie and Max when Jackie said that she wasn’t afraid of Ordell. That was a lie. She’s running in fear, knowing that Ordell could be right behind her, and as the music in the foreground is playing the score to Coffy, we share her fear. Ordell will always be there.