Jackie Brown
This movie is just such a comfort to me. I feel like this review is just gonna rush over my favourite things in it ‘cos it’s another movie I’m sure I’ve written about tons of times before on previous incarnations of the site even though there wasn’t a review here in WordPress, and I wind up feeling like I’m repeating myself after a while.
From the opening strains of “Across 110th Street”, the first in a veritable smorgasbord of great soundtrack selections, this one always has the exact effect on me that Tarantino has said many times in interviews that he wanted. Everytime I sit down to it, it is just so damn joyous to kick back in the company of these characters. It is, if nothing else, I think his happiest film. It’s nearly 2 and a half hours long, but it really couldn’t be any other way – you either go with it or you don’t, and I just adore watching these characters, even when all they’re doing is watching each other.
The camerawork in this movie is amazing – from the first time I saw it on the big screen, my favourite moment has always been the death of Beaumont, that camera staying behind while Ordell drives away, craning up, then coming back down again. That scene also makes use of a motif that I noticed this time around comes up time and again throughout the movie – the way people are always stopping and starting their cars, and the music always shutting down and coming back on in the same place of the song it left off at … it’s such a simple thing, but for some reason it just creates such a great feeling. On the Beaumont death, too, it’s worth commenting on the violence in this movie as it compares to most of Tarantino’s other work – the violence in this movie, rather than being wall-to-wall like Kill Bill, say, it mostly all falls into the same category as the ear-slicing sequence in Reservoir Dogs – with the Beaumont death, we see it from a distance – with subsequent deaths, though each becomes more and more shocking (not because of the gore, just because of who kills who) it’s always fast and mostly clean, but we feel the violence completely, I think it’s done brilliantly – I remember the double-whammy of Melanie and Louis had me just about shaking for the rest of the movie the first time I saw it … it’s the menace of the killer in both cases, the way Louis warns Melanie, the way Ordell bows his head almost in prayer for a long stretch before getting the information he needs from Louis before pulling the trigger – whatever you want to say about Tarantino elsewhere, you certainly can’t call the violence here mindless.
And then those last couple of shots with Robert Forster and the lipstick Jackie left on him, lips pursed exactly like Jackie’s, Jackie in the car mouthing the reprise of “Across …” ... just beautiful. This is not a perfect movie, not by a long shot, and it is overlong if you’re looking for something to pick on. But I could watch it over and over again, it just makes me feel warm inside … I can’t overstate what a comfort this movie is. I could say so much more about it, but I just wanna enjoy the glow it leaves me with now.