Thoughts on Jackie Brown?

It's a masterpiece.

A film I constantly promise myself I will rewatch really soon. I think I've only seen it twice, and the second time was a long time ago. I can safely say I remember loving it, and that it sits in tier two Taranatino with Basterds, Dogs & Django; but then it's been such a long time that I might be undervaluing it (or over).

To quote the great sage and eminent poet Joe Pesci, everything pacinoyes said is bullshit.

Jackie Brown is far and away Tarantino's most mature, grounded film. He and Elmore Leonard are a marriage in heaven; Leonard was a master at snappy stories with badass characters and groovy dialogue, and it feels like Tarantino has always wanted to be the Elmore Leonard of exploitation (at least in terms of his writing). He took what is a decent but otherwise middling-by-Elmore standards novel and jazzed it up, adding a punchy blaxploitation feel but doing it with love and reverence, which is somewhat lacking in the rest of his oeuvre. He treats the genre with respect, in other words. Pam Grier is, for me, the definitive Tarantino female, and gives my favorite leading performance of his (and that's saying something). I've always felt Grier was an underutilized actress; she is commanding when she's on-screen, even in garbage movies (lookin' at you, Ghosts of Mars!), and I'd rate her as one of the most gorgeous women to ever grace a movie screen, even in her autumn years. Robert Forster is one of the most inspired nominations the Academy ever gave, and I'd rate Max Cherry as the character in cinema most deserving of a franchise. The rest of the ensemble is strong (Keaton!), but those two are the ones doing the heavy lifting, and their chemistry does more than sizzle: it fucking roars. Also props to Quentin for managing to wake Robert De Niro up long enough for him to give a solid performance for once.

I read Forty Lashes Less One after Tarantino announced he was going to adapt it years back. He never did, instead doing two comparatively middling Western pastiches. It's a shame, too, because if he'd taken his Hateful Eight cast and just put them in Forty Lashes, you've got an amazing movie.

I am still holding out hope for that Forty Lashes Less One miniseries. I think he talked about it within the last year or two...

I'd have no problem if he did nothing but Leonard adaptations from here on out. Maybe he wouldn't count them against his "ten film limit" because they're not original screenplays, lol.

Agreed. It's mighty hard to fuck up Elmore Leonard as it is (pound for pound, the guy might have the most successful book-to-film adaptation ratio), and there's a slew of 'em Tarantino would rule at. Fuck, man, have Tarantino do a Justified-esque TV series but with Leonard's Westerns, and somehow tie 'em all together that way.

It’s aged so well for me, I appreciate it more and more every time I watch it. Quentin’s most underrated. I also had the pleasure of seeing Jackie Brown last year with an interview with Pam Grier and that was an amazing experience. I’ll share my photo a little later.

Such a great / sensational film filled with very memorable performances .

On a side note, Fonda was such a babe in this !

So completely unlike all his other work. It is still unmistakably Tarantino, but it's so much more a mature a movie compared to the two that came before it, more thoughtful, less cartoony. It's amazingly sad how he regressed to trying to remake pulpy B-movies on big budgets over and over and over again after his hiatus.

The characters are very diverse and each one is fascinating to watch, due to the great acting and the strong script.