Jackie Brown

(Quentin Tarantino, US 1997, 155 min., 35mm)

Michael Keaton. Reliably Tarantino, Jackie Brown is an homage to genre cinema, featuring a diverse cast of charmingly off-kilter characters and a fantastic soundtrack but, as his only adapted screenplay (adapting Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch) it strikes an entirely different tone. Pam Grier, leading lady of the 1970s blaxploitation genre, is Jackie Brown. She supplements her miserable income as a stewardess on a Mexican airline by smuggling offshore cash for black market arms dealer Ordell Robbie (Samuel Jackson). With ten thousand dollars and baggie of cocaine in her purse, she’s stopped by LAPD detective Mark Dargus (Michael Bowen) and ATF agent Ray Nicolette, portrayed by Michael Keaton in a role so fitting he would reprise it for a cameo in his subsequent film, Out of Sight. Hoping to use Jackie to incriminate Ordell, they quickly find themselves embroiled in a confidence scheme, tested further as affection grows between Jackie and her bail bondsman, Max Cherry (Robert Forster).