There are a bunch of fun movies based on Elmore Leonard books – I always like seeing what bits of his style can translate properly – but there are two absolutely great ones that are among my very favorite movies. One is Steven Soderbergh’s OUT OF SIGHT, which I got up the courage to write about for its 20th anniversary in 2018, and I bet you could guess what the other one is. Quentin Tarantino’s JACKIE BROWN has been at the top of my not reviewed list* for I don’t know how many years. It’s intimidating, you know, to try to write something worthy of a movie this good that I’ve put off for that long. But recently I took a vacation to L.A. and I was able to see a midnight show of JACKIE BROWN at the New Beverly (the historic theater owned by Tarantino since 2007), so it’s time to finally do this.

Rarely has there been a more synergistic match of adapted and adapter. The small time criminals who love to talk about other stuff, the funny loser made more dangerous by his stupidity, the protagonists who aren’t following the law either but who are our guys, the very specific regional details – all these things make perfect sense for both a Leonard book and a Tarantino movie. So this becomes both an extra-Leonardy Tarantino and a Tarantino-fied Leonard. An unstoppable combination.

The writer/director’s most inspired elaboration on Leonard’s Rum Punch was turning blonde flight attendant/smuggler Jackie Burke into a new iconic character for circa 1997 Pam Grier. Since she was two decades after her peak fame, still beloved (and popping up in stuff like ABOVE THE LAW and ESCAPE FROM L.A.) but not exactly treated by the industry as the royalty we knew she was, playing the underestimated Jackie seemed appropriate. The character is 44 years old, “waitin on people almost twenty years,” limited in the jobs she can get because of her record, no prospects for advancement or retirement, so she does some illegal deliveries on the side. She deserves a good life that working within the system will never give her.

But when she gets cornered by LAPD Detective Mark Dargus (Michael Bowen, IRON EAGLE) and ATF agent Ray Nicolet (Michael Keaton, MR. MOM) her true Foxy-Brown-ness comes out, as she outmaneuvers both law enforcement and her dangerous employer Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson, THE RETURN OF SUPERFLY) to come out with a life-changing score. Boo-yaa! Tarantino backing her moves with pieces of Roy Ayers’ all-timer score for COFFY, the song Grier sings in THE BIG DOLL HOUSE, “Cissy Strut” by the Meters and other vintage soul grooves underlines Jackie’s Blaxploitation heroine attitude, but this is not a throwback. It’s very much 1997, very particular Southern California energy, with a climax set at Torrance’s Del Amo Fashion Center mall back when you could still buy music on cassette, see THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT on film** and smoke in the food court. Robbie’s empire reaches to a small apartment in Compton, but seems headquartered in Hermosa Beach, where his unspecified relation (he’d probly say bitch) Melanie (Bridget Fonda, LITTLE BUDDHA) smokes weed, fucks his friends, and sometimes reluctantly answers the phone.

Louis (Robert De Niro between COP LAND and WAG THE DOG) and Melanie are kind of a side story, two great actors of differing industry status but both putting in some of their very best work as this deadbeat odd couple. Fonda is so funny; just the way she sits sideways in a chair shows what Melanie wants out of whatever her situation is with Ordell: a life of leisure, sun and weed, barely having to work or be responsible, always wearing what the script calls “her Melanie-uniform of stringy Levis cutoffs and a stringy bra top.” She really is a bitch, but I say that supportively because she’s right, and these guys don’t deserve to be treated nicely.

I can’t quite remember how shocking it was the first time around to see her sarcasm finally light Louis’ fuse (or if I’d read the book already) but on subsequent viewings it’s such a wrenching slow burn, DeNiro so perfectly low energy as Louis, passively going along with Ordell’s shit (including casually showing him a body in his trunk and pretending it’s not a threat) and Melanie’s advances, not seeming to have an opinion on much, but when it comes to his part of the operation and her humiliating him about his incompetence you see the anger rising and exploding into the hardest gut punch in the movie.

A character who I think made less of a mark on pop culture than your average Tarantino creation, but that has always loomed large in my brain, is the aforementioned body, Beaumont. I always had friends who hated Chris Tucker because they thought he was the annoying guy in THE FIFTH ELEMENT. Well, I like that character (super green) but Tucker’s parts in FRIDAY and especially MONEY TALKS (a film by Brett Ratner – yeah, I know) made me a fan for life. Those were for me some of the biggest laughs of that period, and here he is so incredible in a small but crucial part where he does get to be funny a bit but it mostly leans on the power of his acting as it sinks in how much trouble he’s in with Ordell. He tries to wriggle his way out, faces the fact that he can’t, hopes it will turn out okay… but it doesn’t. The rapport he has with Ordell when he’s just thanking him for getting him out of jail, then the extreme discomfort when he’s being asked to get inside a trunk to supposedly ambush some guys in Koreatown, knowing he absolutely should not fucking do this but also knowing that Ordell will not let him say no…

The Beaumont scene works as its own little chapter or short story, and I’d still want it in the movie if it was an irrelevant tangent, but it’s important because 1) Beaumont seems to be the person who ratted out Jackie and caused her whole situation, and 2) his death serves as a warning to Jackie about how Ordell will treat her now that she’s been questioned by cops.

It’s easy to take the greatness of Samuel L. Jackson (especially in Tarantino films) for granted, so much so that I almost forgot to give him a paragraph here. That would be an oversight because this is, I think, one of his best roles ever. Ordell has the usual SLJ humor, charm and swagger, but they barely mask a cold-hearted monster, a misogynist and a ruthless criminal who pretends to be your best friend almost to taunt you because he knows you probly know he has zero sense of loyalty. When he meets with bail bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster, ALLIGATOR) it’s clear that the guy sees right through him but he puts on the innocent nice guy act anyway, as if daring Max to call him on it.

In classic Leonard fashion Ordell is also introduced seeming like a goofball, showing off his video of women in bikinis firing machine guns and (like Melanie) enjoying being some kind of living room beach bum. As much power as he has as an arms dealer, he’s really kind of a loser. Looking good in powder blue doesn’t stop him from being pathetic as he lords over goons like Louis and Beaumont, not to mention this stable of weirdo sort-of-girlfriends in different parts of town who for all we know may have as little respect for him as Melanie does.

But this phoniness and need to maintain his bigshot image make him all the more dangerous. And there’s a visual trick Tarantino pulls in making him look like the Samuel L. Jackson we’re familiar with other than the ponytail and braided goatee, then later having him remove the Kangol and let the hair down. Now all the sudden he looks like Super Fly’s evil cousin. Ugly and weird, no longer even half-assedly hiding his monstrous side. You don’t want to mess with Ordell. Jackie will have to, though.

Man, hearing Bobby Womack’s theme from ACROSS 110TH STREET coming in loud over the old Miramax (yeah, I know) logo to some cheers from the New Beverly crowd gave me goosebumps for real. The theater is famously “always on film” and this was Tarantino’s own print. The dust and imperfections at the start combined with the music made the movie feel authentically ‘70s for a moment before it hit me that this was how I first saw it as a brand new movie, on Christmas Eve 28 years ago at the multiplex where I tore tickets, cleaned theaters and later projected movies. I say this too often, I know, but seeing this felt like time travel.

It’s traveling to 1997, not reliving it, because I’m a different person now. Over the years I’ve seen JACKIE BROWN on film, VHS, DVD and blu-ray, but this was my first time seeing it as a man who recently turned 50 and could not help but think oh jesus, the math is clear, the numbers don’t lie, I am definitely not the young guy I think of myself as. I didn’t go out and get a motorcycle or an earring but I admit it’s been fucking with me, I have definitely been experiencing waves of some mild form of the ol’ mid-life crisis, becoming way more self conscious about how I look, how I dress, what my younger friends might think of me, contemplating my life choices, things I never did, big and small, second guessing even some of the things I’m happy with as the time to switch it up is more clearly finite.

Many said (and still say) that JACKIE BROWN is Tarantino’s “mature” movie. That’s true but it’s also 33 year old QT imagining middle age through his favorite b-movie actors. He was guessing what it might feel like, I was guessing how accurate it must be, now I’m sure both of us have a better idea but I’m still out here guessing because I don’t know what it feels like to be Jackie Brown or Max Cherry.

Forster as Max is still a treasure of a character and performance that stands alone, especially in its era. What strikes me about Max on this viewing is how much of his characterization is through implication. Forster’s approach is as matter-of-fact and no nonsense as Max’s personality, and two-decades-plus-younger QT fortunately doesn’t try to make him speak his truth or spell out what he’s going through. He doesn’t break down and blubber like John Rambo; his version of opening up to Jackie still sounds like a slightly more candid than usual talk with an emotionally unavailable dad. Maybe Tarantino was uncharacteristically aware that he didn’t know everything, so he left blank spaces for us to fill in.

We don’t even see much of the exciting part of Max’s job (though we hear a story about it), we just see him meeting with clients in his little office (with little bathroom) and picking up Jackie at the jail after Ordell bonds her out. We know how he feels about Jackie from the music playing when he first sees her, and the small kiss before she leaves him, and in between from him going to Sam Goody to buy a Delfonics tape, and then we know who he’s thinking about every time he listens to it in the car. He tells her he’s “getting out of the bail bonds business,” and admits hypothetically that he would be tempted to take a shopping bag full of money, but we don’t really know how tempted he is by the actual opportunity to take the money or to start a new life with Jackie.

Other than his brief stint as Jackie’s lookout/bag-carrier Max doesn’t chase his dreams, he just keeps doing his job. I love how he freely shares his professional knowledge whether he’s being threatened by Ordell (who he clearly hates but is still polite to) or advising Jackie. He doesn’t judge her or guilt her about anything. When he finds out she stole his gun he offers to let her borrow it for longer, and doesn’t press her about what she used it for. For his part of the heist the “husband waiting outside the dressing room for his wife” is both his cover story and pretty much his actual role. He doesn’t try to get rich, insisting on collecting no more than a 10% fee.

We don’t know what he thinks about he and Jackie’s age gap (only about 8 years), the cultural differences, or the opposite sides of the law they’ve traditionally been on, or if he even thinks those things are worth contemplating. I think it’s a more grounded version of the OUT OF SIGHT romance: he’s excited by the thought of it, but he thinks it could never work, so he’s just enjoying the moment before it passes. The time in the trunk, to put it in OUT OF SIGHT terms, where the trunk has more positive connotations.

That’s my guess, but we really don’t know why Max turns down going to Madrid with Jackie, or whether (or how badly) he ends up regretting it. That’s all left to the imagination. In his spiel to Louis about guns, Ordell says that everybody wants two .45s because “THE KILLER had a .45, they want a .45.” Max is not a guy who wants to be The Killer. He’s more a preview of a Chow Yun Fat character that didn’t exist yet: CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON’s Li Mu Bai, who’s resigned to a life of longing.

But it doesn’t feel like a sad ending to me. He liked having a little adventure, but he’s not that adventurous. Maybe he got his groove back. Jackie seemed to enjoy his company too, but after he says ‘no’ I doubt she ever looks back. She’s too busy celebrating getting out of there in one piece. “I’m not saying what I did was alright / trying to break out of the ghetto was a day to day fight,” as Bobby Womack sings. Here’s to everybody making it to Madrid, or meeting their Jackie, or at least finding a new appreciation for the Delfonics.

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*I mean that literally! I keep this in my drawer:

**I say this because there’s a poster for THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT at the theater, and in the script that’s the movie Max saw, and he tells Jackie about his crush on Annette Bening. But I always liked that in the movie the song you hear coming out of the theater as he leaves is “Jizz da Pit” by Slash’s Snakepit… the song on the end credits of JACKIE BROWN. I’m pretty sure Max was seeing JACKIE BROWN!