Above the Law

In the Search of the Last Action Heroes (2019) is a documentary that is both a loving tribute to 1980s action cinema and a lament of the decline of R-rated action movies starring the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and Jean-Claude Van Damme. Remember when Steven Seagal was a lean, mean fighting machine, kicking ass in mainstream Hollywood studio movies? He emerged from seemingly nowhere fully formed, complete with model-starlet wife Kelly Le Brock and a headline-grabbing backstory that involved teaching martial arts in Japan and being recruited by the CIA to participate in top secret missions, all thanks to a boost from legendary power broker cum agent Michael Ovitz who helped engineer his semi-autobiographical Hollywood debut with Above the Law (1988).

Back then Seagal was a breath of fresh air in action cinema. He wasn’t a muscle-bound one-man army like Schwarzenegger and Stallone, but a normal-looking guy that was a master of the martial art Aikido. There was a no-nonsense vibe to his persona that cut against the grain of the wisecracking tough guys that were dominating the box office at the time. All he needed was the right vehicle to showcase his talents and Above the Law was that movie, more than doubling its budget at the box office and launching Seagal’s movie career.
 
Nico Toscani (Seagal) is an ex-CIA agent now Chicago police detective whose past comes back to haunt him when a nasty fellow agent by the name of Kurt Zagon (Henry Silva), who he encountered during his stint in the Vietnam War, helps a Salvadorian drug lord peddle his trade on the streets. Of course, Nico is a bit of a loose cannon, refusing to back down when two FBI agents tell him to leave the drug lord alone. He’s a straight arrow who loves his family, his neighborhood, and city, doing everything in his power to rid it of crime. This involves, at one point, scaring a young cousin straight and helping a local parish priest bring immigrants into the country. It becomes personal, however, when the neighborhood church Nico attends is bombed, wounding countless people including his grandmother and killing the presiding priest.
 

Roughly 13 minutes in we get to see Seagal do his thing as Nico enters a seedy bar looking for his young cousin who has gotten mixed up in drugs. Naturally, all the barflies give him grief and try to start some shit (look for a young Michael Rooker in a cameo), which he quickly finishes in impressive fashion. What catches your eye is not just Seagal’s skills but Andrew Davis’ no-nonsense direction and how he shoots the action, capturing his star in full-body shots so that we see him actually doing these moves with very little editing unlike his more recent fare.
 
Davis handles the action like a pro, mixing it up so we don’t get an endless series of scenes of Seagal beating up guys. We see him using his gun and even hanging onto the roof of a car trying to bust some scumbags. It’s not The French Connection (1971) but it is exciting. There’s also a fantastic foot chase where we see Seagal running and not the usual Hollywood bullshit but him flat-out sprinting in smoothly choreographed tracking shots.

Seagal acquits himself just fine in Above the Law and what he lacks in acting chops he more than makes up for in intensity and confidence in his abilities. It helps that Davis surrounds him with the likes of Pam Grier and a bevy of Chicago character actors such as Ron Dean (The Fugitive), Jack Wallace (Homicide), and Ralph Foody (Home Alone) – most of whom appeared in the director’s previous Chicago-based actioner Code of Silence (1985). They provide local color and help give a real sense of place.

I like the unconventional casting of Grier as Seagal’s long-suffering partner. Instead of going for the stereotypical white guy partner, the filmmakers cast a woman of color and never address it or made a big deal about it. She’s just his partner and a damn good one at that. In a nice touch, the filmmakers make a point of showing Nico and his partner doing the day-to-day grunt work, like pounding the pavement asking locals questions. Unfortunately, a young Sharon Stone doesn’t fare as well, playing the thankless role of Nico’s wife who has very little to do except look adoringly at him when he does something good and frightened when their family is threatened.
 
Above the Law sets up CIA drug traffickers as the bad guys led by the always reliable Henry Silva who bookends the movie as a nasty piece of work that specializes in torture. With his smooth voice and icy intensity, he makes for a chilling villain that enjoys his work a little too much thanks to the actor’s deliciously evil performance. His imposing presence makes Zagon a formidable antagonist for Seagal.
 
When he was a teenager, Steven Seagal moved to Japan in 1968, studied and became an expert in the martial arts known as Aikido, so much so that he was the only Westerner to operate his own dojo there. He claimed that several CIA agents operating in the country became students at his dojo. It has been said that Seagal was subsequently recruited by the agency but in interviews he refused to cite specific missions only saying, “You can say that I lived in Asia for a long time and in Japan I became close to several CIA agents. And you could say that I became an adviser to several CIA agents in the field and, through my friends in the CIA, met many powerful people and did special works and special favors.”

It is telling, however, that at the time of filming director Andrew Davis said, “What we’re really doing here with Steven is making a documentary.” Furthermore, Seagal said, “The whole motivation behind me doing this film was my trying to make up for all the things I’ve seen--and done. I’m tired of seeing us try to destabilize governments, prop up dictators and get involved with drug smugglers and crooks.” We will probably never know if Seagal worked for the CIA but it made for good hype that helped garner interest in the movie.
 
Michael Ovitz, then head of CAA, one of the most powerful talent agencies in Hollywood, was a martial arts aficionado that reportedly studied with Seagal at his West Hollywood based Aikido Ten Shin Dojo. They became friendly and Ovitz felt that Seagal had the raw materials to become a movie star. Then Warner Brothers president Terry Semel remembers Ovitz being Seagal’s biggest fan: “He went far beyond the role of just being Steven’s agent. In fact, with the type of superstar client list Michael has, you wouldn’t normally see him work so closely with a first-time actor.”
 
Ovitz kept insisting to Semel that Seagal had potential to be a movie star. When it came to the studio courting Seagal, he claimed that they felt Clint Eastwood was aging out of the action genre and told the martial artist, “We’d like to see you take his place. We think you can be the next Eastwood.” They gave him a several scripts, told him to pick one and they’d make it. Not surprisingly, Semel’s account differs: “I don’t think it was a matter of anyone replacing Clint. He’s gone far beyond being just an action star.”

Before Warner Brothers greenlit the movie, they wanted to see a demonstration of Seagal’s martial arts prowess. Needless to say, he didn’t disappoint, putting on quite a show with his assistants: “The demonstration was quite miraculous. With just a toss of his hand, Steven would send the other guy flying. I’m no martial-arts expert, but he had the ability to knock these guys up in the air so effortlessly--well, it was pretty astounding,” said Semel. It was enough for the studio to bankroll a $50,000 screen test with Davis shooting several scenes from the screenplay.
 
The nine-week shoot was not without incident. Seagal broke his nose in a scene where Henry Silva accidentally punched him. Seagal went to the hospital, was treated and came back to work. Afterwards, he didn’t blame Silva: “My biggest nightmare is having someone like Henry--whose eyes are bad and isn’t trained in stunts--to be swinging at me. I should have my own people in here, doing the stunts.” In addition, Seagal was not used to the slow pace of the filmmaking process with technical delays and having to compromise in action sequences: “Sometimes I’ll tell Andy (Davis) that a scene isn’t going to work. And sure enough, when we see the dailies, it doesn’t look right. I just feel that I’m being shortchanged, that I’m not getting to show enough great martial-arts action.” The filmmakers were also under the gun to finish before a threatened Director’s Guild strike, which only added to the pressure.
 
Not surprisingly, Above the Law received mostly negative reviews with the exception of Roger Ebert who gave it three out of four stars and said of Seagal, "He does have a strong and particular screen presence. It is obvious he is doing a lot of his own stunts, and some of the fight sequences are impressive and apparently unfaked. He isn’t just a hunk, either." In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote that the movie, "may well rank among the top three or four goofiest bad movies of 1988. The film...is the year's first left-wing right-wing-movie. It's an action melodrama that expresses the sentiments of the lunatic fringe at the political center." The Washington Post's Hal Hinson wrote, "Above the Law, which offers Steven Seagal to the world as a new urban action hero, is woefully short on originality, intelligibility and anything resembling taste. But none of this comes as a surprise. What is surprising is how little invention or energy there is in the movie's action sequences."

In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Michael Wilmington wrote, "Starting in the semi-realistic framework of the ‘70s cop movies, it veers off into ‘80s action movie cloud-cuckoo land: the paranoid one-against-a-hundred clichés of the average Schwarzenegger-Stallone heavy-pectoral snow job." Finally, the Chicago Tribune's Dave Kehr wrote, "The action sequences are sleek and strong enough, but the story that chains them together is too ambitious for its own good. Upstanding liberals both, Davis and Seagal seem distinctly uncomfortable working in a genre as inherently right-wing as the cop thriller, and they`ve tried to salve their consciences by introducing some heavily 'progressive' elements."
 
The commercial success of Above the Law launched Seagal into the action movie star pantheon, kicking off a fantastic run of movies in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. He was paired with solid directors like Davis and John Flynn (Out for Justice), worked with wonderful character actors like Chelcie Ross (Major League) and William Forsythe (Raising Arizona), and worked with decent budgets. Seagal, however, began to believe his own hype and his ego took over. He began making odd choices in movies, exerting too much control, like starring, producing and directing On Deadly Ground (1994), and the quality suffered. Hollywood stopped bankrolling his movies and he became a cautionary tale, a pop culture punchline and downright toxic when allegations of his sordid personal life eclipsed his professional one.
 
Above the Law has a coherent, well-written story wedged between action sequences that deals with political assassinations, international drug cartels and drug money-funded wars – ambitious stuff for an action movie. It’s good to see that the filmmakers cared about such things instead of it being an afterthought to be stitched on. Davis doesn’t try to re-invent the cop movie genre and he doesn’t need to – instead, he expertly fulfills many of its conventions and in entertaining fashion. The movie acts as a showcase for a talented action star and is a fantastic snapshot of an emerging movie star with a promising career ahead of him.
 

SOURCES

Goldstein, Patrick. “Steven Seagal Gets a Shot at Stardom.” Los Angeles Times. February 14, 1988 

Something Wicked This Way Comes

The 1980s was a fertile period for fantasy films and Disney tried to capitalize on this in the early part of the decade with an adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s classic novel Something Wicked This Way Comes. This was a turbulent time for the Mouse House as they struggled with making commercially successful live-action and animated movies. So, they decided to take a chance on a few projects that did not originate in-house and were not typical Disney fare, including Tex (1982), Tron (1982) and this Bradbury adaptation (1983). The author adapted his own work and legendary director Jack Clayton (The Innocents) came on board, but the project was plagued with several post-production problems that threatened its integrity. This is apparent in the amped up, special effects-laden finale, but it does little to diminish the power of the film.

Something Wicked This Way Comes is narrated by Will Halloway as an adult (Arthur Hill) reflecting on his misadventures as a 12-year-old (Vidal Peterson) with best friend Jim Nightshade (Shawn Carson) during October in the small town of Green Town, Illinois. We see them playing together after school and Clayton really captures the carefree life that kids enjoy at that age, how “you want to run forever through the fields, because up ahead, 10,000 pumpkins lie waiting to be cut,” as the voiceover narration says. In a few minutes, Clayton captures a bygone era so brilliantly that you can almost touch the leaves or smell the crisp, cold air. The film is drenched in autumnal atmosphere, thanks to legendary cinematographer Stephen H. Burum (Rumble Fish), so that you want to run forever and can almost smell the smoke in the air as the voiceover narration informs us.

Traveling lightning rod salesman Tom Fury (Royal Dano) tells Jim that his house is in need of protection. While Tom is trying to make a sale, he is also foreshadowing the danger that will threaten Jim and his friend later on. Something Wicked offers a loving, romantic look at small-town life as we meet key townsfolk who all know each other. This sets up the fragility of the town’s infrastructure and how one dark storm can threaten it, giving Will (and us) his “first glimpses into the fearful needs of the human heart,” as his older self sagely observes. Clayton introduces all of these personable pillars of the community so that we become invested in them and this establishes just what is at stake. This pays off later on so that we are put on edge when we see them in peril as their very dreams and desires are preyed upon in order to take their souls.

One night, a train brings a carnival to town. Jim and Will sneak out of their respective homes to take a look at the train as it arrives. All the tents and attractions are erected simultaneously as if by magic. The boys soon meet Mr. Dark (Jonathan Pryce), the proprietor of the Pandemonium Carnival and an enigmatic figure full of mystery and magic. We get a little teaser of this when Jim and Will first meet him and notice a constantly moving and swirling tattoo on his arm. They also witness other strange magic at work, like a striking carousel that goes in the opposite direction, causing those that ride it to get younger. Mr. Dark subsequently uses the Dust Witch (Pam Grier), “the most beautiful woman in the world,” to bewitch and seduce the men in the town.

Something Wicked is chock full of gorgeous cinematography, like the shot of the carnival at night in silhouette while dark storm clouds gather overhead. There is also disturbing imagery like when Jim and Will discover the latter’s head decapitated by a guillotine or a menacing green mist that pursues the boys as they run home or the onslaught of spiders that invade Jim’s bedroom, reaching a nightmarish pitch until they wake up.

Thankfully, Shawn Carson and Vidal Peterson aren’t the typical precocious child actors, but instead deliver thoughtful performances as our adventurous protagonists that become involved in a battle for the very soul of their town hanging in the balance as they must stop Mr. Dark with the help of Will’s father, Charles (Jason Robards), the town’s librarian.

He’s a wise, older man with a heart condition and Clayton offers a visual cue as to the man’s fragile health by placing a coffin in the background of a scene with the librarian looking rather apprehensive in the foreground. The always reliable Jason Robards anchors the film with his trademark gravitas as he plays a man full of regret over things in his life he didn’t do. There is a nice scene between Charles and Will where he confesses his regrets. It is a touching moment with a tinge of melancholy that sets up the librarian’s desire to redeem himself. Robards brings a world-weariness to a man that has never left his town and never took any real chances in life.

Jonathan Pryce is well-cast as the malevolent Mr. Dark, using black magic to take the souls of the townsfolk. The actor has loads of charisma with a commanding voice that has a cultured, Shakespearean air to it. He has nice scene with Robards where Mr. Dark exerts his influence to question Charles about Jim and Will’s whereabouts. It’s great to see two talented actors like them square off against each other. They manage to top this scene with another where they quote literature to each other as a way of verbal sparring with some exquisitely written dialogue being brought wonderfully to life.

The roots for Something Wicked This Way Comes originated from Ray Bradbury’s childhood: “When I was seven years old, one of my cousins died, way out in the farm country. At three a.m., I would wake up and hear a locomotive passing by in the distance. For me, that was like the sound of the dead going by in the night. I never forgot it.” He always loved circuses and magic and this resulted in a short story entitled, “The Black Ferris” which was first published in pulp magazine Weird Tales in May 1948. Ten years later, actor Gene Kelly wanted to work with the author. The two men met and after screening Invitation to Dance (1956), Bradbury wrote an 80-page treatment entitled, Dark Carnival. Kelly wanted to direct it, but was unable to secure financing and it was shelved.

Bradbury took his treatment and adapted it into a novel called Something Wicked This Way Comes, which was published in 1962. Over the years it sold more than 18 million copies and Hollywood came calling with producers Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler buying the rights and the likes of Sam Peckinpah, Mark Rydell and Steven Spielberg considered to direct at one point or another. Peter Douglas, son of actor Kirk Douglas, met Bradbury in a bookstore in 1975 and subsequently bought the film rights to the novel. Douglas made a deal with Paramount Pictures and then-president David Picker, but with the stipulation that Bradbury, who had a close affinity for his novel, would adapt it himself. However, Picker left, according to Clayton, after an “alleged feud” between him and studio chairman Barry Diller and his replacement wasn’t interested in the project. After a year of it being in turnaround, Douglas was in danger of losing his option on the book and his father stepped in, giving him the money to renew the option.

Douglas met with director Jack Clayton, who was interested, and then approached Walt Disney Productions in 1981. Studio executives were looking for “something unusual,” according to Bradbury, and agreed to bankroll the film. The author had always wanted to work at Disney. In 1962, Bradbury had sent Walt Disney a copy of his novel and got a letter back saying that he liked it, but felt it wasn’t right for the studio. While working on the screenplay with Clayton, Bradbury realized that he had to be ruthless and this resulted in omissions, the diminishing of screen-time for characters he loved, like the Dust Witch, and images from the book that they felt could not be translated onto film.

Almost $3.5 million (from a $16 million budget) worth of sets were constructed by production designer Richard MacDonald (Cannery Row). It was a challenge casting child actors for the roles of the two main children because Clayton preferred to work with kids that had very little experience. Principal photography began in September 1981 on the back lot of Disney Studios. Originally, Clayton had planned to shoot in a town in Texas, but it was too close to rainy season and shooting on a back lot allowed them to stay on schedule. During filming, Bradbury kept his distance, but snuck onto the set “at sunset, just to stand in the band cupola … It was just great to be surrounded by this small town, I felt I was home.” Shooting lasted 63 days, which Clayton felt was too fast, especially dealing with special effects.

Almost a year after principal photography ended, several scenes were reshot and Disney spent $3 million on post-production special effects, utilizing the same computers that created the effects for Tron. It took so long because during filming, Disney’s most experienced visual effects artists were busy with Tron and during that time the effects tests were always wrong. It was only when they were done with Tron that Clayton was able to get proper effects done for his film. A few years after the film’s release, actor Jonathan Pryce was rather candid about the problems the production ran into. He said that Something Wicked “wasn’t conceived as a special effects film because the budget originally wasn’t there.” He claimed that Clayton originally envisioned a film about atmosphere “implied by people’s fears, and through the actors and acting,” and this resulted in Disney executives panicking because they assumed audiences wanted to see a special effects-heavy film like Star Wars (1977). Pryce also claimed that the studio spent millions of dollars on computer graphics that weren’t used in the final cut.

Something Wicked This Way Comes enjoyed mostly positive reviews. Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars and wrote, “In its descriptions of autumn days, in its heartfelt conversations between a father and a son, in the unabashed romanticism of its evil carnival and even in the perfect rhythm of its title, this is a horror movie with elegance.” The New York Times’ Janet Maslin wrote, “Without Jason Robards as the father who has disappointed Will, and is given a chance to redeem himself through the evil that the carnival creates, the movie might be nothing but eerie.” However, in his review for Starlog, author Alan Dean Foster wrote, “Something Wicked gives us a charming remembrance of Midwestern boyhood, but it doesn’t terrify us. The evil in Something Wicked does not go bump in the night without first saying, ‘Excuse me.’”

Some films only affect you as a child, benefitting from being seen at an early, impressionable age, and lose their power as you get older. This is not the case with Something Wicked This Way Comes, which is an enthralling dark fantasy – a horror film for children yet will appeal to adults as well. Careful what you wish for because you just might get it is the film’s central theme. There is no easy way to realizing one’s dreams. They should be achieved in their own natural way, but that should be left up to the individual, not dangled in front of them like some kind of carrot, dazzling them so that they don’t think of the consequences. Something Wicked is a fantasy horror film not afraid to expose children to the darkness of the world and doesn’t do it some sanitized way, but one that put its youthful protagonists in real danger while imparting important life lessons.

SOURCES

Lofficier, Randy and Jean-Marc. “Jack Clayton: Directing Something Wicked This Way Comes.” Starlog. June 1983.

Lofficier, Randy and Jean-Marc. “Ray Bradbury: Weaving New Dreams and Old Nightmares at Disney.” Starlog. July 1983.

Pirani, Adam. “Jonathan Pryce: The Boy from Brazil.” Starlog. April 1986.

Szalay, Jeff. “Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes.” Starlog. May 1983.

Jackie Brown

After the commercial success of Pulp Fiction (1994), Quentin Tarantino could make whatever film he wanted. He decided to defy expectations by adapting Elmore Leonard’s crime novel Rum Punch as Jackie Brown (1997), a comeback vehicle tailor-made for one of his favorite feminist Queens of Kicking Ass, Pam Grier. After years of plugging away in countless unremarkable supporting roles, she started resurfacing on the popular culture radar with small but significant parts in Mars Attacks! (1996) and Escape from L.A. (1996). However, Jackie Brown would be a starring role alongside Robert De Niro and Samuel L. Jackson who appeared in supporting roles. Tarantino’s gamble paid off and while it didn’t rack up Pulp Fiction-type grosses at the box office, it was a critical darling primarily due to Ms. Grier hitting it out of the park with a confident, assured performance. More importantly, it demonstrated that Tarantino could step back from the pop culture pastiche that was Pulp Fiction for a more substantial outing that placed emphasis on mature, fully-realized characterization over the more superficial reproductions in his previous films. The end result was a sometimes funny, sometimes poignant look at the notion of aging and the baggage that it brings.

Pam Grier appears on-screen during an opening credits sequence that evokes a similar one in The Graduate (1967) only instead of evoking a somber mood as that film did with “The Sound of Silence” by Simon and Garfunkel, Jackie Brown sets an upbeat tone with the triumphant strains of “Across 100th Street” by Bobby Womack and Peace thereby proudly announcing the return of the actress to the mainstream after years of toiling away in television.

We are subsequently introduced to Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson), a slick guns dealer who loves to talk big (we first meet him explaining the pros and cons of various guns), but he is also someone not to be messed with as an interlude with one of his flunkies – an even chattier guy known as Beaumont (Chris Tucker) – illustrates. In trademark Tarantino fashion, the two men verbally spar as Ordell convinces Beaumont to do a favor for him. As in most of his films, characters often talk as a form of survival and only when they stop is when bad things tend to happen. The Beaumont interlude has nothing to do with the story, but it does provide us with crucial insight into Ordell. He’s clearly a dangerous man who will do anything to protect his business. Tarantino depicts this sequence in a series of his characteristic long takes that establishes the stylistic approach he adopts for the rest of the film. This allows scenes to breathe and the actors to savor each word like a fine meal.

Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) is a stewardess for Cabo Air, an obscure Mexican airline, and works for Ordell, bringing him large amounts of money across the border into the United States. One day, she’s stopped by L.A.P.D. detective Mark Dargus (Michael Bowen) and A.T.F. agent Ray Nicolet (Michael Keaton) who search her. In addition to finding $50,000 in cash, they also discover a small packet of cocaine that was planted and which lands her in L.A. County Jail. Ordell hires Max Cherry (Robert Forster), a veteran bail bondsman, to get her out. When Max meets Jackie coming out of lock-up it is quite possibly love at first sight as the camera oh-so gradually zooms in on Max’s face and he is clearly drawn to this beautiful woman walking towards him as the soulful strains of “Natural High” by Bloodstone plays over the soundtrack, complimenting this moment perfectly.

Being the nice guy that he is, Max drives Jackie home and on the way they go for a drink at a local bar. It gives her a chance to have a drink and a cigarette and decompress after a brief stint in jail. Fed up working for an increasingly suspicious Ordell and feeling pressured by Dargus and Nicolet, Jackie – with Max’s help – devises a scheme to con Ordell out of $550,000 of his retirement money and give the cops what they want – the gun dealer.

After the sprawling epic that was Pulp Fiction, with its unexpected plot twists and shifts in time, Tarantino dials it back for Jackie Brown, taking his time by delving deep into these characters, letting us get to know them in a way he hadn’t done in his previous films. In the past, his characters were pretty superficial – a collection of pop culture references and quirky dialogue, but working from solid source material provided a strong foundation from which he could add his trademark flourishes.

The best scenes in Jackie Brown are between Jackie and Max, like when he visits her the morning after she gets out of jail. In-between discussing what to do about Ordell, they talk about vinyl vs. CD and getting old. Max speaks frankly about losing his hair and doing something about it while she speaks of gaining weight over the years. It is a wonderfully honest conversation between two adults who have been around the block more than a few times with very little to show for it except a few regrets.

Tarantino wrote the role of Jackie Brown specifically for Pam Grier and clearly plays to her strengths while also allowing her to show off acting chops that the veteran actress was rarely given the opportunity to in the past. Grier has definitely aged well, but Tarantino doesn’t avoid the issue of age and in fact makes it the film’s central theme. Like Jackie, Grier has had her share of ups and downs in life, only her character has little to show for it. The scam she plans to pull on Ordell is her chance to get out of a crappy situation and start over in style. This scheme revitalizes Jackie and Grier does a great job of conveying the transformation that her character undergoes over the course of the film.

Much like Grier, Robert Forster’s career started off strong, but fizzled out over the years into a string of forgettable B-movies and T.V. shows. However, Tarantino never forgot about him and was confident that, with the right material, the actor would remind everyone just how good he could be. Forster brings a world-weary charm to Max with every line in his weathered face suggesting years of dealing with criminal low-lifes like Ordell and Louis and he’s tired of it all. Forster has a great scene where Max tells Jackie a story about when he decided to quit being a bail bondsman. It not only provides his motivation for going in with Jackie on her scheme, but also brings them closer. They are both looking for a better life.

Jackie Brown was part of a solid run of films for Robert De Niro in the 1990s that included the likes of Casino (1995), Heat (1995) and Ronin (1998). Where in those film he played ultra-professional criminals, in Jackie Brown he’s a slightly dim-witted goon, but the actor wisely doesn’t go for a stereotypical caricature that we’ve seen in so many films, but rather a guy who thinks he knows what’s going on. Ever the chameleon, De Niro looks the part with his unshaven, unkempt appearance. Louis is incompetent as evident in his actions during the climactic money switch as he lets Melanie’s increasingly annoying behavior get to him. De Niro handles this sequence so well – we share in Louis’ mounting frustration.

As he demonstrated with Pulp Fiction, Samuel L. Jackson was born to say Tarantino’s dialogue. No one issues badass threats quite like he does and you can see the actor relishing every word as he flat out enjoys the hell out of his role. Ordell thinks he’s the smartest guy in the film and this over-confidence proves to be his undoing as he underestimates Jackie. Not surprisingly, Jackson gets most of the film’s flashiest dialogue, but he’s also quite gracious with is castmates as evident in the scenes he has with Grier, which crackle with intensity as Ordell maintains a jovial façade, but there’s an undercurrent of menace. It’s a tricky balancing act that the actor manages so well.

Tarantino gives all the significant characters prominent moments to do their thing, like when Louis (Robert De Niro), a friend of Ordell’s, and Melanie (Bridget Fonda), Ordell’s beach bunny girlfriend, bond over getting high. Both them aren’t too bright with Melanie only thinking she is while Louis struggles to keep up with Ordell’s plans, content to go with the flow. Initially, Melanie comes across as a flighty pothead, but as the film progresses her annoyance factor increases, so much so that we actually sympathize with Louis’ growing frustration, which comes to a head during the climactic money swap. Bridget Fonda, a mainstay of ‘90s cinema, really sinks her teeth into the role during this sequence as Melanie relishes needling Louis about his lack of intelligence, right down to over-annunciating his name in a way that would make even the most resilient person lose their cool.

Michael Bowen and Michael Keaton have small, but pivotal roles as a cop and an ATF agent respectively. They nail the condescending arrogance of their characters who think that they’ve got Jackie under their thumb. Keaton especially is good as a guy who thinks he’s some sort of hot shot with his new-looking black leather jacket and tight white t-shirt. It’s a role he would go on to reprise briefly in another Elmore Leonard adaptation, Out of Sight (1998). One of the joys of Jackie Brown is watching all of these actors bouncing off each other and having fun doing it as they get to chew on these meaty roles.

When Quentin Tarantino was 15-years-old, he shoplifted a paperback copy of The Switch, a crime novel by Elmore Leonard. He loved it and read the author’s other books and was amazed at how Leonard created “his own unique universe.” After Pulp Fiction, Tarantino took his time until the right project presented itself and that was Leonard’s 1992 novel Rum Punch, which featured some of the same characters from The Switch. Tarantino remembered, “When I read the book, I saw the entire movie in my head.” In particular, he was drawn to the age of the characters: “I liked their age. I liked the fact that this is an older movie, that we’re dealing with more mature people … I liked the fact that there was a wonderful desperation about these people, due to their age and their place in the scheme of things.”

Early on, Tarantino reached out to Leonard and told him that he was adapting Rum Punch. In adapting the book, Tarantino made a few significant alterations, including changing Jackie’s race from white to black, because he wanted Grier to play the role, and the setting from Florida to L.A. because he knew that area better. Then, Leonard heard from Tarantino again just before filming started and the filmmaker admitted that he had been afraid to talk to him because of all the changes he made. Leonard simply told him: “Why? Because you’ve changed the title and you’re starring a black woman in the lead? Do what you want. You’re the filmmaker, you’re going to do what you want anyway.”

While writing the screenplay, Tarantino began to think about who could play Jackie and thought of Pam Grier. “She had all the right qualities. She had the right age – she’s in her 40s. She had the right looks for that age.” Initially, he envisioned playing the role of Ordell because the filmmaker felt that the character was a composite of all his mentors when he was a young man. Ordell was the “persona of who I could have been at 17 if I didn’t have artistic ambitions … I would have been involved with one scam after another. I would have done something that I would have gone to jail for.” It took some effort on Tarantino’s part to let go of the character and let Samuel L. Jackson play him. To prepare for making Jackie Brown, Tarantino watched Hickey & Boggs (1972), Straight Time (1978) and They All Laughed (1981).

Tarantino first met Grier when she auditioned for a role in Pulp Fiction (which would eventually be played by Rosanna Arquette). A year afterwards, the actress met him on a street in Los Angeles where he told her that he was writing a film with her in mind. A year later, she met Tarantino again and inquired about the film. He gave her the script. At first, Grier figured that his then-girlfriend Mira Sorvino would be playing Jackie and she’d play her best friend. She was pleasantly surprised when he told her that she would be playing Jackie. Grier identified with the character because “there are metaphors in her life that parallel mine. I know I’ve brought a lot more humanity, a lot more pain and emotion and texture to this role than to anything I’ve done because of everything I’ve been through.” When she accepted his offer, she told Tarantino, “You’re asking a lot. I’ll have to strip myself bare. I’ll have to reveal myself and be raw on screen.” To that end, she gave it her all: “I was so tired at the end of the day, I’d just go home, sit in the tub and cry.”

Robert Forster first met Tarantino when he auditioned for Reservoir Dogs. He didn’t get the part (the role went to Lawrence Tierney) and the director told him that he wouldn’t forget the actor. While writing the script for Jackie Brown, Tarantino had four actors in mind to possibly play Max – Paul Newman, Gene Hackman, John Saxon and Forster, but was always leaning towards Forster. When he finally decided to cast Forster in Jackie Brown, he had no agent and according to the actor, “nobody wanted me.”

Jackie Brown enjoyed mostly positive reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave it four out of four stars and wrote, “You savor every moment of Jackie Brown. Those who say it is too long have developed cinematic attention deficit disorder. I wanted these characters to live, talk, deceive and scheme for hours and hours.” The New York Observer’s Andrew Sarris wrote, “Mr. Tarantino has returned after a long directorial hiatus with his wisest, warmest, subtlest and most suspenseful effort without sacrificing his patented outrageousness and his exhilaratingly clever narrative strategies.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “B” rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “Pam Grier looks marvelous, with her diamond eyes and sexy half sneer, and though the middle-aged bulkiness of her body gives you a bit of a start, she is, as always, a commanding actress; she blends street smarts and melancholy the way she used to blend street smarts and Amazonian hauteur.” The Washington Post’s Steven Hunter found the film to be “funny and the plot twists are so sudden and violent it’s great fun.”

However, in her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “The film is best (and most patiently) enjoyed as a set of laid-back sketches that don’t always head anywhere, even if a filmmaker of Mr. Tarantino’s talents can make schmoozing such an end in itself.” The Los Angeles Times’ Kenneth Turan wrote, “For one thing, at 2 hours and 40 minutes, Jackie Brown plainly takes longer than it should to unfold. Along with that too-leisurely pace goes a lack of immediacy, a sense that this is the kind of thing that Tarantino not only might have done in his sleep but in fact has.”

When Jackie Brown was released, filmmaker Spike Lee criticized Tarantino for excessive use of the “n-word” racial epithet in the film. “Quentin is infatuated with that word,” Lee said, “What does he want to be made – an honorary black man?” Years later, Tarantino addressed Lee’s comments: “My biggest problem with Spike was the completely self-serving aspect of his argument. He attacked me to keep his ‘Jesse Jackson of cinema’ status. Basically, for a little bit of time before I came along, you had to get Spike Lee’s benediction and approval if you were white and dealing with black stuff in a movie. Fuck that.” Regardless, Leonard himself approved of Tarantino’s film: “I liked it. I like to see my characters done so well on the screen.”

At the heart of Jackie Brown is an unrequited romance between two people that we want to see get together. They come from different worlds and this conflict is captured perfectly in the last scene as Jackie drives off with the Delfonics’ "Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)” playing over the soundtrack. I love that this fine example of classic early Philly soul is their song (it might as well be also known as the “Jackie Brown Love Theme”) and encapsulates their relationship. Jackie’s facial expression goes from slightly sad to a slight smile at having successfully accomplished her goal back to slightly sad because of the unrequited romance with Max.

Tarantino has to be commended for refusing the temptation to simply crank out another Pulp Fiction and instead adapt someone else’s work and make it his own. He made what is easily his most mature and substantial film – a Quentin Tarantino film for people who don’t like his films. Jackie Brown isn’t merely a pastiche of other movies and pop culture references, but actually tells a substantial story with characters that resonate long after the film ends. Unfortunately, it didn’t perform as well as Pulp Fiction did at the box office and ever since Tarantino has fallen back to what he knows best – endlessly sampling other movies, giving genres like the martial arts movie and the western his own unique spin, but they all lack the soulful substance of Jackie Brown.

SOURCES

Feeney, Sheila Anne. “Back Where the Action Is.” New York Daily News. January 2, 1998.

Fleming, Michael. “Playboy Interview: Quentin Tarantino.” Playboy. 2003.

Gerston, Jill. “Pam Grier Finally Escapes the 1970’s.” The New York Times. December 21, 1997.

Gilchrist, Todd. “Robert Forster Talks about Auditioning for Reservoir Dogs and How Jackie Brown Boosted His Career.” The Playlist. October 4, 2011.

Hirschberg, Lynn. “The Man Who Changed Everything.” The New York Times. November 16, 1997.

McGilligan, Patrick. “Elmore Leonard Interviewed.” Film Comment. March/April 1998.

Millner, Denene. “Pam Shifts Grier in Jackie Brown.” New York Daily News. December 25, 1997.

Portman, Jamie. “Tarantino Takes Different Direction.” Montreal Gazette. December 19, 1997.

Snead, Elizabeth. “’70s Survivor Pam Grier.” USA Today. January 2, 1998.

Svetkey, Benjamin. “Jackie, Oh!” Entertainment Weekly. December 19, 1997.

Vigoda, Arlene. “Lee Takes on Tarantino Over Use of Racial Slur.” USA Today. December 18, 1997.

Vognar, Chris. “Elmore Leonard Discusses Jackie Brown and Other Movie Adaptations in a 1998 Interview.” Dallas Morning News. August 20, 2013.