JACKIE BROWN: A Test Quentin Tarantino Didn't Pass.
Written: Jun 13 '00 (Updated Jun 25 '01)
Product Rating:
Pros: Pam Grier, Samuel L. Jackson and Robert Forster.
Cons: If not a Tarantino movie, it would have been trimmed to 110 minutes.
The Bottom Line: JACKIE BROWN: an over-hyped, slow, spavined 155 minute melodrama, full of bad improvised dialogue. Pam Grier's comback performance, its only bright spot, alas, has led to nothing.
The good news about JACKIE BROWN (Tarantino, 1997) is the comeback of Pam Grier; the bad news is almost everything else about the film.
When I saw it at the Regency Theater in San Francisco, the Management had stationed an usher on the steep stone stairway leading up to the entrance. He looked down a long, enthusiastic line of Tarentino fans. Every moment or two, he said loudly: "We want to warn you, this film is over two and a half hours long."
So what, I thought, I see quite a few movies that length these days.
Had I known, the film would seem FOUR hours long, I would have gratefully turned away.
The film begins with a plane landing from Mexico, and then a moment by moment tracking shot of Stewardess Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) walking down an LAX concourse. After 30 seconds of this, the mind wanders. Jackie is carrying money for illegal arms dealer Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson). She gets busted by ATF Agent Ray Nicolette (Michael Keaton), who attempts to "turn her." Fearing for her life, she plays along, going into Robbie's den, where she meets his mistress Melanie (Bridget Fonda) and a newcomer, an old, newly sprung ex-con, Louis Gara (Robert De Niro).
Jackie becomes involved within a convoluted web of Robbie criminal capers, Nicolette's attempt to roll up the gang, and her own scheme to get out from under, which involves a bail bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster). The plot is not THAT complicated, however. John Huston would have knocked it out of the park in a 105 minutes or so.
Quentin Tarantino was evidently smarting over criticisms that he is an excellent writer of dialogue, a good if flawed director of actors, but a careless editor. A creator of shallow movie comic books (which young audiences eat up). And so, he decided to make a French Movie, heavy on character and dialogue. Tarantino turns out to be no Claude Chabrol.
JACKIE BROWN is a turgid, interminable motion picture in which a majority of the important sequences run several minutes too long. So tedious is the film, that for the first time in my life, I witnessed an impromptu intermission a little over an hour into its running time. They just stopped the film, and an assistant manager stepped up on the stage apron to announce a ten minute break. Sleepy patrons, others loudly snoring, roused themselves to go out to the lobby for coffee or a coke.
The film is riddled with laughable mistakes, which unfortunately, you have a full chance to notice. The credibility of incidents supposedly taking place in 1995 is ruined by wrong dates on calendars, equipment not yet available, incorrect ID card birth dates, poor match shots throughout.
Not only does the screenplay and direction sabotage the effort, but Tarentino's habit of loosing his actors to improvise their dialogue must add twenty minutes of garulous dialogue to the film. While Jackson, Grier, and Forster overcome the script, and/or, disguise their improvisation, the others are pretty terrible. Keaton resembles an overage college boy, who doesn't understand what he's doing. Fonda is attractive, sexy and gets off a few zingers, but melts into a puddle during a long scene in a womens clothing department, which is the climax of the movie.
De Niro deserves a brief paragraph of his own. He has increasingly turned in tired repetitions of the sleepy-eyed, laid back performances he gave in MARVIN'S ROOM and THE FAN. Here he snuffles and mutters his way through his long performance, throwing out improvised lines he has already used in several other movies.
Tarantino returns to form in staging a couple of brutal murders. One can almost see him waking up, like my fellow theater patrons, and shouting: "Enough of this French (bleep)! I get to kill somebody!"
Finally, there is a long, long final tracking shot, similar in its first minute or two to the sequence which begins JACKIE BROWN. Jackie is making her escape, full of angst and regret, but she is at least on her way. (I can see, in my mind's eye, Tarantino prancing with pleasure: "They will call it my A MAN AND A WOMAN"!
When the film was over, we stumbled, rubbing our eyes, into the blustery air like survivors of a great siege. "Isn't he a genius?" "Wasn't it good?" "It was okay, but it was really long." "It was long, and sure wasn't much like PULP FICTION." "Yeah, you're right."
Well, latter day geniuses also have to make mistakes in order to grow. I hope Tarantino learned from the failure of JACKIE BROWN something about tightly scripting a dramatic dialogue film. (Such as indiscriminatingly and carelessly turning the white characters of Elmore Leonard's Rum Punch into Black characters, giving scant care to dialogue and characterization).
The movie did revivify the careers of Pam Grier and Robert Forster, but neither has done anything of real note since then. Nor has Tarantino had a successful project after JACKIE BROWN. (I understand that he will soon produce a film about a high school swimming coach, starring Robert Forster, to be directed by Dana Augustine.)
JACKIE BROWN comes across stronger on video because the lengthy dialogue scenes fill the smaller screen, a kind of evening length "Movie of the Week," and you can stop it for a break, or get coffee, whenever you like.
That is not a very ringing recommendation, but it is the best I can do.
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