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Plot
Air hostess Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) illegally smuggles money for arms dealer Ordell Robbie in order to increase her wage (Samuel L. Jackson).
Ordell decides to help his friend Beaumont (Chris Tucker) and call bail bondsman Max Cherry after receiving a call from Beaumont begging him to bail him out of jail (Robert Forster).
Ordell plots to murder Beaumont because of fear that Beaumont could turn him into the authorities, but it is already too late. In reality, a few days after his release, the man gave the police a tip, and they were able to catch Jackie in the act.
The woman is persuaded to collaborate by Officers Mark Dargus (Michael Bowen) and Ray Nicolette (Michael Keaton), but Jackie declines to divulge information regarding the trafficker and is arrested.
Ordell posts her bail and vows to kill her before she turns on him as Beaumont did. Once she is liberated, Jackie will know she can rely on Max because he has demonstrated genuine concern. She makes an agreement to turn over Ordell to the two agents after speaking with them.
However, Jackie also comes up with a clever scheme to make the criminal believe that she is on his side and wants to aid him in his human trafficking by fooling the authorities. Ordell, who is perplexed, appears to accept the woman's story and gives her the order to deliver $500,000 from Mexico to the United States.
Louis Gara (Robert De Niro), Ordell's right-hand man, is instructed to pursue Jackie.
The stewardess tells Max about her scheme and seeks his help in exposing the scammer and stealing the money. Jackie, despite Ordell's suspicions, is skilled at taking advantage of human trafficker flaws.
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Why you should watch it?
Quentin Tarantino after the amazing critical and popular success of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction decides to produce a new movie, which, for the first time, has a topic that is not his own but is based on a novel by Elmore Leonard, Rum Punch.
The protagonist of the movie wants to transmit the image of a strong, empowered woman. The role was given by the director, to Pam Grier, who was resurrected by Tarantino. Pam was a very well-known actress in blaxploitation films (yeah I also had no idea what they were, but Saint Google is always there when we most need it 😇).
Blaxploitation is a fusion of the two words black and exploitation - was a film genre that originated in the United States in the early 1970s, when many exploitation films were made on the cheap with African-Americans as the target audience. The films had mainly African American actors, were directed by African American but also white directors, and were the first to have soul or funk music soundtracks. Although criticised by civil rights activists because of their use of stereotypes, they were highly successful by filling the inherent gap of providing entertainment specifically created for African Americans and were immensely popular with black audiences as well as white audiences.
(Information taken from Wikipedia)
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When Pam went to Tarantino's office to talk with him about the role, she found it full of posters of her most famous roles. She found out that she was one of the famous director's heroes 🤯.
Her choice as the lead actress and main character of the movie shows us how Tarantino wanted to underline also the race aspect in the movie since in the original book the protagonist is a female woman, but not afro-American.
And this aspect is very clear in some of the dialogues of the movie, for example when detective Dargus says to her (while threatening to imprisonate her):
But Jackie is one hell of a woman and although she has to face a lot of obstacles, she uses all of her skills to overcome each one without getting hurt. She has acquired resources as a result of having to rely solely on herself while surviving as an African-American lady and gunrunner in the Compton crime community. Jackie is a cynical, disheartened, observant, independent, and cunning lady who will need to carefully consider each action in order for her plan to succeed.
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The story of the movie is exquisite.
The spectator is constantly interested in what Jackie will do next to survive since the viewer can clearly see the extent of the danger that hangs over her head at every point in the story. The antagonist's objectives are just as obvious from the onset and immediately stand out for their tenacity, indifference, and deceitfulness. One of the exquisite storytelling tactics used by Tarantino is a crucial sequence that is seen from three separate points of view near the end of the second act.
Tarantino directs a very composed noir, with a fully linear and sequential plot, in which the sense of disorientation can only derive from the fact that the director makes elegant internal cuts in the scenes in which Jackie is about to 'illustrate' his plan to someone. As a result, the spectator is not aware of what the plan is until he sees it on stage and realizes what is happening. In anticipation of the mother of all actions, Tarantino creates an all-encompassing work on the characters, their mutual trust, their relationships, and their mutual objectives. He does this with a few rhetorical tricks that are by no means omniscient.
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Conclusion
This movie is not of the best know by Quentin Tarantino, which has produced so many masterpieces of the genre that some of his works have been forgotten by the public. But I can assure you that if you are a fan of the American director, then you will love also this movie. So give it a try and let me know what you thought of it.
Rating
My personal vote is:
9/10
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