Jackie Brown

Life has not been easy for Jackie Brown (played by Pam Grier) but being arrested for intent to sell drugs along with smuggling in 50 thousand dollars from Mexico will only make her life worse. Though with being the only means that Ordell Robbie (played by Samuel L. Jackson) has to get his money into the states he will use Jackie and anyone else that he can to get that money. That means using the ex-con Louis (played by Robert De Niro) and having to trust Jackie even when she has been talking to the ATF officer Ray (played by Michael Keaton). Being able to get the money into the states starts to become a bigger deal for Ordell than he expected and now the lives of 6 people get mixed together.

RETRO LOOK BUT MODERN MOVIE:
Jackie Brown is another one of Quentin Tarantino that involves multiple cast members as each of them all play off each other where all could be the main character. Tarantino has a passion for crime plots, Jackie Brown is yet another of his crime plotting films that deals with a lot of twists and turns that take the viewer on this adventure. With this film however Tarantino has made it stand out from his other films because of the lack of violence in this one. It has some violence, wouldn’t be a good crime flick if there wasn’t some guns going off at some point but that’s the thing, it’s just a small amount of violence compared to his other films. Which is one of the aspects that makes Jackie Brown such a good movie.

What I like about this movie is pretty much everything, the plot, the actors, the way it has this retro look to it yet still being modern, having a great soundtrack, and nothing beats the dialog this movie contains. For a movie that is 2 hours and 34 minutes long I still didn’t get enough of it and wanted more. Every one of these actors do a great job in their roles that it actually looks like they have just filmed real people. For me my favorite characters where Louis with his small reactions to what’s going on around him, those horrible looking clothes he wears, and just the fact that it’s Robert De Niro playing the role don’t hurt either. The other character is of course Jackie Brown herself. Pam Grier plays the role of this smart woman who is not going to take any grief for the cops or from the gun running killer Ordell.

I like this movie because you just never knew what was going to happen in the next scene, oh you might think you know what is going to happen but well you really won’t, unless you’ve already seen this movie, which I have and it still remains good. I love how everything connects in this movie and the fact that it does tell a story that is straight through from beginning to end. Even the way that the film takes on the different views of the other characters at the end made Jackie Brown a lot of fun to watch. Though this movie is made by the dialog, it’s smooth, and the actors say their lines like it’s what they would actually be saying instead of being lines. And I just love that disco style music that gets played for certain action scenes. Tarantino has a gift for dialog writing but he also has a gift for fleshing out characters that are so cool on screen that even though they are bad guys you can’t help but really like them.

JACKIE ON BLU RAY:
Another surprise for me on how Blu Ray’s can actually look good even when it’s a movie that’s been transferred over. This film came out 14 years ago, so I wasn’t expecting much on how it would look on Blu Ray but it looks great. What makes this movie look good is that there is hardly no grain or noise to be seen in it. I can’t say that there’s absolutely none here, but it’s very slight and it is only seen in a small amount during some dark scenes. In fact I’ve seen more noise in some newer movies put out then there is on this one. Adding to the experience of this Blu Ray is the even levels of sound. I heard everything and at no time did I have to adjust my volume levels.  Even the bonus features, over 3 hours of them in fact, are a lot of fun to watch, especially the deleted and alternate scenes. This is a good movie made even better with Blu Ray.