Another Ordell accomplice, Chris Tucker, is arrested for reckless behavior. Ordell uses taciturn bail bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster) to free Tucker, who is then murdered to ensure his silence. Ordell is too late, however, and Federal agent Michael Keaton catches Brown with undeclared cash. Ordell again turns to Cherry to bail out Brown, but Brown is smarter than Tucker, and colludes with Cherry against both Ordell and Keaton to keep a half-million dollars Ordell is trying to smuggle in from Mexico.
How others will see it. Jackie Brown made multiples of its budget at the box office. It has high user ratings at imdb.com, and a whopping 91,383 user votes (at the time of writing). It received a Best Supporting Actor nomination from the Oscars. But it is nonetheless less popular than most other Tarantino features. Too much talk, and not enough preposterous moments that can be discussed at the water cooler. If companies still had water coolers.
How I felt about it. I have seen this movie several times now, and continue to be impressed by it. The characters, the script, the story, are all suspenseful and entertaining with no shortage of dark humor. As usual for Tarantino, the soundtrack provides quality semi-obscure oldies, and he adheres to a veritable Production Code maxim: the bad guys get what is coming to them.
Tarantino's rep ensures that he can get A-list actors, even in supporting roles. Robert De Niro, Chris Tucker, Michael Keaton, Bridget Fonda: it's quite a line-up. The best performance, though, belongs to Robert Forster, who was Oscar-nominated. Samuel L. Jackson is nearly as great. Fonda is a delight.
Pam Grier was praised for her acting here, but to me, the blaxploitation icon almost looks bored. And don't think the Feds shouldn't be interested in her source of funds for an extended Spanish vacation. By the way, Spain has an extradition treaty with America.
Jackie Brown is clearly a great or near-great movie. But there is one thing about it that bothers me. That is the scene where Ordell goes to Cherry's bonds office to get the payoff from Jackie. He is double crossed, of course, but that isn't what bothers me. We suspect all along that Jackie will come out on top, just like Uma Thurman perseveres in the Kill Bill double feature.
What annoys me is how stupid Ordell is when he enters the building. He should enter standing behind Max Cherry, with a handgun drawn and pressed against Cherry's head. Instead, Ordell stands there with arms dangling, waiting for Ray to gun him down.
Also, the scenario for Jackie Brown to get the half-million is far fetched. Of course, the Feds would search the entire contents of Jackie Brown's flight bags, and find the half million. There is no reason for them not to go through the entire bag. Beyond that, they would notice Max Cherry, an unaccompanied middle-aged man at a fashionable clothing store for women half his age, hanging around at the time of the bag delivery to Melanie, especially when Jackie reports Ordell will show up at Cherry's bond office. They would certainly want to look at the contents of Cherry's safe, where they would find stacks of $100 bills with serial numbers likely suspiciously close to the marked ones on Ordell's body.
So, the film is flawed after all, but that takes little away from its many assets. Unfortunately, the relative lack of acceptance for Jackie Brown was taken too much to heart by Tarantino, and his subsequent films aren't as strong as his Dogs-Fiction-Brown trio. He got too far away from his strength, snappy dialogue, in favor of what was never the best part of his movies, the ultra-violence.