Here's a big old love letter to the wonderous era of 70s blaxploitation films.
Or as I like to think of it; 'The unappreciated Quentin Tarantino film'. Everybody seems to remember the rest.
Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, the 'Kill Bill' films. But Jackie Brown always gets overlooked and it's a shame as Jackie Brown is a darn good film.
I'd argue it's a little better than Pulp Fiction. It's technically better than Reservoir Dogs (though I'm not sure I'd prefer to watch). At the end of the day it belongs in the same category as your Kill Bill dose to omage films.
But unlike Kill Bill; Jackie Brown is firmly based in reality (by comparison). It doesn't go completely off the rails like other Tarantino films tend to do.
It's a heavy dialogue film based around the preparation for a giant heist in where you're not sure which person is supposed to be playing who.
It's kind of clear that Jackie Brown is manipulating everybody and you're unsure if there's anyone she actually trusts but as the film goes on Discover becomes all the more pointless as everyone's plans starts to fall through in one way or another. Rather it's bad faith on the police part, greediness of the weapon dealer or just a betrayal by a close time friend.
It's the worst kind of film to review; if you just don't want to talk about every single plot point in the movie.
Because the story is in the details.
The actual Heist involving half a million dollars while trying to survive being either arrested or killed by a bunch of delinquents doesn't really make up the meat of the story.
It's just a massive backdrop for a bunch of people to lay out various parts of their lives as they spew meaningless dialogue about one thing or the other. ''You know. just like most Tarantino movies. Except here it feels a bit more real as everybody is just kind of old miserable and downtrodden.'' There's none of that jazzie energy that you get with films like 'Pulp Fiction' or intense hollywood moments like Inglourious Basterds.
As characters go in Quentin's films Jackie Brown is easily the best. The characters are just interesting and kind of weird and just so much fun to watch engage with each other.
The weird thing about this film is that its strength is also kind of its weakness. Obviously it's heavily inspired by films like 'Foxy Brown" or 'Cleopatra Jones' but it grapples with their style in such a way that it just makes me yearn to watch those other movies instead. You see Tarantino doesn't just rip off another film style, he adapts it into his own which makes for a really good film making on his end. but in doing all of this he sometimes loses that unique corniness those old films had. A kind of style that just can't be done in the Modern Age because the culture in times of just changed that little bit. So we can make for a bit of a hollow movie. Honestly it all depends on how you're wanting to watch the film. If you go into Jackie Brown expecting a 70s action crime Thriller and you're going to be slightly disappointed.
Still I'd recommend Jackie Brown absolutely. It's a really solid character drama that haves thee occasional bits of action just to keep you motivated (well really it has one action scene at the very end and a bunch of tense moments involving people getting killed earlier on). Really the only thing I'd suggest as may be pausing the film halfway through and giving yourself 20 minutes just to do anything else because it runs a little long.
Oh and the soundtrack is absolutely phenomenal. When it comes to using licensed music in your films nobody doesn't quite as well as Jackie Brown. Everything here is just so goddamn good.
I mean they've got The Delfonics after all you can't beat that.
It's weird seeing Pam Grier acting in this film alongside a musical performance of hers she did back in the 1970s. Like there's nothing I have to really say about, it it's just weird to see it happen.
It's like seeing Bing Crosby on a film when he's 50 but listening to one of the songs from when he was in his 30s in the same film.
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