Across 110th street, I’m bringing this review to my 3.5 readers.
This oldie but goodie popped up on Netflix and I couldn’t help but watch it. IMO, it’s one of Quentin Tarantino’s best though in history, it tends to be forgotten when ranked up against the likes of his more popular works like Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs.
The plot? I’ll be honest, I’ve seen this movie a few times since it first came out in the late 1990s and it still confuses me but my best description is its like The Sting but at a shopping mall and with shopping bags instead of briefcases. Money is changing hands and you’ve got to follow where it’s going.
Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) is a mid-forties stewardess for an airline that flies between Mexico and California. She makes low-pay and subsidizes her $16,000 a year salary by running cash for illegal gun runner Oddell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson.) Robbie keeps his cash stored in safety deposit boxes at a bank in Mexico to keep it from being confiscated in case he is ever arrested. He brings it up as needed from time to time with Brown’s help and her stewardess gig is the perfect cover.
Or so they thought. ATF agent Ray Nicollette (Michael Keaton) is onto the scam and pinches Jackie on a money run. When Brown is bailed out by grumpy yet kindly, middle-aged bail bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster), Nicollette gives her an option – she can either go to jail for a long time or she can help with a sting operation and catch Odell in the act of accepting the illicit cash.
The problem? Jackie could dummy up and do her time but Odell has a bad habit of bailing out past accomplices who have been pinched through Cherry and killing them before they can testify. Cherry sees the pattern and fears he’s being used. Brown sees the pattern and fears she’ll end up DOA like ex-Odell accomplice Beaumont (Chris Tucker).
And so, a crazy, convoluted plot begins, one in which Jackie and Max conspire to bring in the cash, keep it for themselves, yet still somehow con Odell into thinking Jackie is on his side and con the Feds into thinking she’s on their side, fulfill the requirements of the Feds’ sting and get off the hook while evading Odell’s tendency to murder potential witnesses.
Robert DeNiro and Bridget Fonda round out the cast as Odell’s henchman and girlfriend.
So, where to begin?
Pam Grier was at the height of her career in the 1970s with several funky blacksploitation films. Go check out some of those films and she is truly a foxy mama. However, the 1970s was an era of low standards in Hollywood. Many 70s flicks, when looked at through today’s eyes, come across as glorified student films with all kinds of crazy, nonsensical things going on.
Tarantino loved those films dearly and brought 70s nostalgia to his 90s filmmaking and gave Grier a film made with modern techniques that she so greatly deserved. Though she’ll be remembered for classics like Foxy Brown and Coffy, this movie is a love letter to those films lone gone by. She’s absolutely beautiful in this, a tragic figure, someone who is smart but obviously had some bad breaks, wishes she had achieved more and is finally given a chance to run off with a score that will change everything late in life if everything goes off without a hitch.
Cherry’s character is the same. He’s spent his life running down crooks and is tired of it. He wants out of the bond game and could use a cash infusion. My one criticism is it’s implied early in the film that he’s going to retire after the scam but doesn’t. I can see why he doesn’t but I don’t want to say here so as to not give it away. At least I assume he doesn’t retire. It looks like he doesn’t at the end of the film. The romance between Cherry and Brown is touching and understated, much different than say, the young love you see on film. Young love, the stakes aren’t that high. If it doesn’t work out, they’ll find someone else but Cherry and Brown, you want them to end up together yet understand there are many obstacles in their path. At the same time, they are at an age where this is their last chance for love.
Quite literally, this may be the best movie for all the actors involved. Jackson is legendary but he’s Jackson in every film. He’s Jackson here too but Tarantino creates a menacing character in the form of a man who has spent his whole life amassing a fortune through evil deeds and isn’t about to lose it lying down.
SIDENOTE: Jackson wears a different Kangol hat in every scene in this flick. When I saw it as a young man, I thought those hats were so awesome that I bought a couple, wore them often, then eventually realized I was the only white guy I knew wearing them, felt a bit pretentious and self-conscious and stopped. Alas, I never made them look cool, but Jackson surely did. I’ll be honest though, looking at this movie through modern eyes, I realize, yeah, Kangol probably gave Tarantino a boat load of money to turn this movie into a commercial. In one scene, Jackie and Odell both wear Kangols and its like, come on, even back then no one was wearing that many Kangols.
Tarantino was the great resurrectionist of 70s careers. He did it with Travolta in Pulp Fiction and did it again with Grier and Forster, who was a 70s tough guy. Sadly, I don’t recall Grier going on to do too many things though I think she was in a few more 90s flicks after this. Forster went on to do a ton of movies after this up until his recent passing.
Keaton’s career had cooled in the 90s so this movie was good for him though I’d say his rehash happened more recently.
DeNiro is also legendary but like Jackson, he just plays DeNiro, except he’s different here. He really comes across as a dumb guy who is easily miffed and annoyed by little things. I won’t say how that feeds into the plot.
And then there’s Bridget Fonda. Ahh Bridget. I think this will be the part she is long remembered for. She’s so beautiful and naughty in this. She had a lot of parts in the 90s and then went away and I was sorry to see online that she got fat. Hey, I can’t complain. I’m fat myself. Time is a real SOB. At least she had this movie though. What did I have?
I think this is the first or maybe one of the first movies I saw Chris Tucker in too.
STATUS: Shelf -worthy. God, it feels like I saw this movie yesterday.
Bookshelf Battle 