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Jackie Brown Collector's Edition( Review 2)

No film in the last twenty years has been more influential, both in terms of other movies and pop culture, than Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. A narrative bending tale of relentlessly cool bad guys, Pulp Fiction ingrained Royale's with cheese and the seductive nuances of the foot massage into the American lexicon while beginning an endless succession or imitators, none of which held a candle to their inspiration. As film lovers clamored for more Tarantino, the director took his time choosing a follow-up. Not satisfied to revisit the enclosed universe he had created with 1994's Pulp and 1991's Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino decided to make a film that, while still containing his love for hip villainy, would be more character driven. He finally found the right combination of character and cool in the Elmore Leonard novel Rum Punch.

Transplanting Leonard's book from Florida to Tarantino's home turf of Southern California and changing the titular heroine's race to black to accommodate the casting of former Blaxploitation queen Pam Grier, the result is a satisfying concoction of Leonard's textured low-lives and Tarantino's magnificent dialogue.

Grier plays a middle-aged stewardess whose piddling job with Cabo Air, the low-man on the totem pole of the airline industry, is put in jeopardy when she's caught smuggling cash into the country for gun dealer Ordell Roby (Samuel L. Jackson). Typical Leonard double-crosses ensue as Grier, with the help of sympathetic bail bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster), conspire to outwit Roby and the ATF (led by Michael Keaton as agent Ray Nicolette) and walk away with a million dollars in cash.

Though the crime caper genre typically puts character on the back burner and allows the elaborate heist itself to be the central character, Tarantino merely usually the genre's conventions as a canvas to paint elaborate character portraits brought to life by a great cast.

Jackson is excellent as always, creating Roby as outwardly charming and funny while making the violence and treachery that lurks beneath that exterior palpable. In one of his last truly shaded characterizations, Robert De Niro also shines as Roby's dimwitted cohort Louis, building his character through body language rather than words.

After gaining the reputation of a career Lazerus by bringing John Travolta back from the dead, Tarantino took it a step further with Jackie Brown. Travolta had at several points in his career been a huge star, but Grier was an actress who, even in her classic films of the 1970s, was never particularly good and Forster, while always a solid character actor, had never risen above the status of B-movies. Placing your film in the hands of two long-faded, low-wattage stars is a gutsy move, and it pays off as Grier gives what is easily the best performance of her career while Forster wonderfully underplays his role.

Underneath all the tough guy banter and betrayals is the story of two middle aged characters who are no longer satisfied with their lives and choose to make a change. Tarantino, momentarily forgetting about his never ending quest for hipness, allows his characters to exist in reality instead of the furtive celluloid fantasies of his movie universe.

Which isn't to say Tarantino completely departs from the style that made Pulp Fiction a phenomenon. The camera virtuosity is still in place, paying subtle tribute to 70s-era filmmaking with split screens and a funkadelic soundtrack. The pulp-culture infused dialogue is lessened but Tarantino still manages to slip John Woo's The Killer, Helmet Berger and Rutger Hauer into conversations.

With only the leisurely paced 152-minute running time as a detractor, Jackie Brown marks Taratnio's maturation as a filmmaker. While not as entertaining, stylish or irreverent as Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs, Jackie Brown stands as the most human of Tarantino's films.

While the 40-minute documentary "Jackie Brown: How it Went Down" is a disappointment, consisting mostly of five year old press junket material, behind the scenes footage and the cast and crew kissing up to each other, most of this Collector's Edition's special features are well worthwhile.

The "Siskel and Ebert" review, MTV clips (a contest promo and a cue card reading Carson Daly in an early version of TRL) and soundtrack chapters (pretty useless since the disc doesn't tell you which song corresponds to which scene) are a waste of time. However, an in-depth, nearly hour long interview with Tarantino is worth the price of admission by itself. The hyperkinetic director delves extensively into casting, scripting and his love of film in general. There's also an excellent trivia track, which scrolls text subtitles on the bottom of the screen during the movie, though many of the tidbits are taken from the documentary and Tarantino's interview.

The most fun feature is a collection of old movie trailers from Grier and Forster. With such 70s classics as Foxy Brown, Coffy and Grier's "women in prison" films, there are 20 trailers from Grier's days of pimp-slapping butt whipping, while Forster's contains cult classics like Medium Cool, Reflections in a Golden Eye and Alligator. You also get over 200 stills in the stills gallery, trailers and TV spots and a DVD Rom with a complete copy of the film's shooting script.