Lucas
Versantvoort / 6 June 2013
Spoilers
ahead!
Jackie
Brown is the kind
of movie I could easily watch several times and one I find superior to
Tarantino’s debut Reservoir Dogs,
in terms of replay value if nothing else. The story is complex (though
not as complicatedly told as Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction) and the
characters actually feel like characters.
The main characters are: Jackie
Brown, a middle-aged woman who works for Ordell Robbie, an arms dealer; Melanie
and Louis, his ‘helpers’ and last, but not least, Max who becomes Jackie’s bail
bondsman. Jackie is caught for smuggling money for Ordell. She has to decide
whether to help the cops and risk being killed by Ordell or spend time in jail – an unpromising situation for a
middle-aged, black woman, as Jackie is well aware of. She is bailed out through
Ordell by Max, who falls in love with her. She then thinks of a plan to fool
Ordell, his friends and the cops and still walk away with the money, but she
needs Max’s help.
One of the reasons why I consider
Jackie Brown to be better than Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs is because of
the way a sub-theme regarding women is handled throughout the story. While on
the surface the movie appears to be a straightforward heist flick, underneath
lies a theme regarding women and the men in their lives who desperately want to
maintain the upper hand, the position of dominant power. And I’m not talkin’
female empowerment à la Kill Bill… It isn’t a coincidence that the
strongest female character in the movie is also the one the movie is named
after. Jackie Brown, played by Pam Grier, seems to be the dupe and plaything of
the FBI and others, but she eventually outsmarts them all. On the other hand, males
like Ordell and Louis try to keep their cool and stay on top of things, but to
no avail. Take the opening scene for instance. Melanie tells Louis that Ordell
merely repeats things he heard about guns. This means that Ordell wants to
desperately sound like an expert on his craft and thus maintain an air of
superiority. Jackson’s performance, while not anything new for him, reflects
this well, coming across as someone who desires to be The Boss in every way,
but has difficulty in doing so. This can also be seen in the disrespectful and
futile way he tries to boss Melanie around. Futile, not only because Melanie
outsmarts Ordell, but also tries to betray him, despite perhaps our immediate
assumption that she would be incapable of this because of her looks. Louis
stays mostly silent, because he’s got little to say, eventually preferring to
just get high. Towards the end of the film, Louis and Melanie, with what they
believe is a bag full of money, walk out of the shopping mall with Louis
forgetting where he parked his car. This causes Melanie to belittle him. Louis
does the only thing he can think of in a desperate attempt to save his
frightened, little ego and shoots Melanie.
Males failing to maintain control
can also be seen in other things, little things. Ordell tells others several
times that the police try to scare suspects with longer than usual prison
sentences, basically telling them to man up. However, when Jackie Brown tells
Ordell she told the police how she’s working for him despite the fact they basically
already knew this (Jackie asks the police “Besides, why else would an ATF man
be after him?”), Ordell freaks out, negating his own ‘masculine’ Way of Life.
One would be right by saying that
this is basically a ‘female empowerment’ film, but the great thing is that it
isn’t obviously so. There’s no needless moral overtones or a moment when the
Big Message is spelled out for us, which would of course suck all the fun out
it. Now, one is able to both enjoy the film and the ‘female empowerment’ angle,
without feeling like they’re being ‘taught something’.
Overall, Jackie Brown isn’t
as playful with storytelling and fun as Pulp Fiction, but it is better and more maturely written than Reservoir Dogs. It’s a shame this movie had such unfairly high
expectations after Pulp Fiction, because I think it cost this film and
Tarantino some…Brownie points.
Pun
intended, I regret nothing…
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