Jackie Brown (1997)

“AK-47. The very best there is. When you absolutely, positively got to kill every motherfucker in the room, accept no substitutes”.

Imaginatively dragging Elmore Leonard’s bestseller Rum Punch into his own postmodern universe peppered with quirky dialogue and cinematic references, director Quentin Tarantino makes this re-energised crime thriller a homage to, and an updating of, 1970s pulp fiction.

Blaxploitation icon Pam Grier is great as Jackie Brown – the air hostess pressured into an entrapment scam after being arrested for smuggling cash and drugs into LAX for ruthless arms dealing acquaintance, Ordell (Samuel L Jackson).

And where is Ordell when his courier is facing prison? He’s in the apartment of stoner Melanie Ralston (Bridget Fonda), a past-her-prime surfer girl who gives Ordell attitude for showing chicks-with-guns videos to dim-bulb ex-con Louis Gara (Robert De Niro).

Ordell won’t accept Jackie sitting in jail, so he arranges for bail bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster) to spring her. That way, Ordell can kill Jackie before she rats on him to the feds to save her ass.

Realising that Ordell might be planning to keep her mouth shut for good, Jackie decides to use her feminine wiles to outsmart everyone wanting to exploit or kill her and comes up with a dicey, complicated plan to keep cops and crooks busy with each other while she escapes with $500,000.

Tarantino draws maximum suspense from a superb cast that includes Robert De Niro, Bridget Fonda, Robert Forster and Michael Keaton, and an array of visual techniques such as staging a key scene three times from three different points of view.

The theme of ageing, of powers fading and last chances, runs through the film, notably in Ordell’s former cellmate, Louis, a man broken by the years, played sublimely by a dopey De Niro, and the bail bondsman with whom Jackie shares a tentative almost-romance, Max Cherry (Robert Forster is another example of Tarantino’s knack for perfect resurrection casting).

Complementing this breathlessly exciting down-and-dirty crime drama is a fabulous array of funk classics.

Jackie Brown
Pam Grier
Ordell Robbie
Samuel L Jackson
Max Cherry
Robert Forster
Melanie Ralston
Bridget Fonda
Ray Nicolette
Michael Keaton
Louis Gara
Robert De Niro
Mark Dargus
Michael Bowen
Beaumont Livingston
Chris Tucker
Sheronda
Lisa Gay Hamilton
Winston
Tom “Tiny” Lister Jr
Simone
Hattie Winston
Public defender
Denise Crosby
Judge
Sid Haig
Amy, Billingsley sales girl
Aimee Graham
Billingsley sales girl number two
Tangie Ambrose
Cockatoo bartender
Ellis E Williams
Raynelle, Ordell’s junkie friend
T’Keyah Crystal Keymah
Cabo flight attendant
Venessia Valentino
Anita Lopez
Diana Uribe
Cocktail waitress
Renee Kelly
Bartender at Sam’s
Elizabeth McInerney
Girl at security gate
Colleen Mayne
Steakhouse waitress
Laura Lovelace

Director
Quentin Tarantino

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