Jackie Brown

Saw Jackie Brown (thanks, Mike!) it was a Quentin Tarantino heist film. The indomitable Miss Brown, an ex-smuggling air hostess, sits coolly at the center of a labyrinthine plot involving a gun-running Samuel L Jackson, his stoned girlfriend and criminal friend, a bondsman and the good men at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The heist is tense and revisited from several angles, so we can see from more and more omniscient viewpoints what, exactly, goes down. The film is fun and satisfying with a Swiss-watch feeling of exactness to its cuts and pans, but it also manipulates and shifts the audiences sympathies cleverly enough to tincture the fun with something interesting.

The film is not very heavy in Tarantino's quirks. Yeah, there's a single close-up of feet for no damn reason and old funk & RnB out the wazoo, but it's not nearly as self-indulgent as Deathproof was (no pretty women suffer ridiculously, for example.) True to form however, the film takes place smack-dab in the middle of a moral no man's land. Jackie is obviously conniving to keep as much as possible of a massive shipment of cash to herself. We start off in her corner. She seems, at first, like a tough but decent lady. Soon, however, she starts shifting alliances as easily as she changes outfits. She is sneaky and cut-throat, only redeeming herself when we see where her roulette wheel finally stops, and yet we are firmly on her side. I was really hoping she wouldn't wind up allied with Samuel L because he's the villain and I want to continue to like Jackie. But what has Sam done that's so wrong? If that money belongs to anyone it is him and he's only looking out for himself, as Jackie is. There's a feeling that Jackie doesn't want to hurt any more people than she has to, but she connives to murder sometimes and Sam's feelings for a downed comrade seem genuine.

I am perhaps forcing this moral relativism (it is my pet theory that that's what Tarantino is largely about, moral relativism) but I did sometimes felt sympathy for Sam and sometimes was uncomfortable with how easily Jackie manipulated everyone. Far from detracting, however, this adds some spice to the story which I believe is at heart a good old heist movie, full of fun and surprises. Who comes out on top is pretty much (though of course not totally!) a forgone conclusion, but it's so much fun seeing how they pull it off. It has shades of blaxploitation as well (look no farther than the title) and may be homage-ing things I don't know about. Ok. Enough. Good movie.