Christmas Day in 1997 wasn’t out of the ordinary, most people celebrated Christmas with friends and family. A roast dinner with all the trimmings, exchanging presents around the tree, sipping Bailey’s, consuming your body weight in chocolate, and over-indulging in every way imaginable. For the most part, it was probably a largely forgettable affair that blends in with the various Christmas Day musings of festivities past.

However, as the majority were tucking into their mid-afternoon dinner, director Quentin Tarantino was licking his lips, not at the sight of turkey and stuffing, or even at Bridget Fonda’s seductively positioned feet, but at the critical reception of his latest film. Jackie Brown debuted in cinemas on Christmas Day 1997. This year marks 25 years since the film first premiered, and while the crime drama may not automatically spring to mind as one of Tarantino’s flagship titles to many fans, it is certainly one of his best screenplays to date, if not the best, at least according to other filmmakers and critics. A quarter of a century later, Jackie Brown is undoubtedly a timeless classic…

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The Story of Jackie Brown

     Miramax Films

Jackie Brown remains Quentin Tarantino’s only adaptation, with the story taken from Leonard Elmore’s 1992 novel, Rum Punch. Set against the backdrop of South Bay, Los Angeles, the film concerns arms and drug dealer Ordell, who employs money mules to transport his illegal profits across the American-Mexican border. Samuel L. Jackson is riveting as the enigmatic and episodically violent Ordell, who shows no conservatism in killing off those that threaten his trade. For someone so unpredictable, mentally unhinged, and so shamelessly misogynistic, Jackson’s Ordell can nonetheless be charismatic.

Ordell utilizes Jackie, a flight attendant who makes regular trips for her criminal boss, and is subsequently intercepted by tipped-off police. Found with $50,000 and cocaine, Jackie finds herself lodged between a rock and a hard place. With the threat of a police charge, imprisonment, and Ordell’s merciless wrath closing in on her, the wily vixen devises a ploy, along with the smooth-talking Max Cherry (Robert Forster), that’ll ensure Ordell’s demise, her pardon from time in a state penitentiary, and a life-changing lump-sum of half a million dollars.

Although set in 1995, Jackie Brown has a real vintage aesthetic, akin to the 1970s haziness of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice or Licorice Pizza. The richness of the movie’s color palette accompanies a film that is awash with vibrant personalities, effervescent performances, and a classic R&B soundtrack that is defined by the soulfully gruff baritones of Bobby Womack’s Across 110th Street.

Tarantino Turns Criticism Into Female Empowerment

Tarantino has frequently been chastised for his apparent mistreatment and misogynistic representation of women. Critics cite everything from the Uma Thurman car-crash debacle, where he was almost implicated in conspiracy to murder, the discontent at Margot Robbie’s bit-part role as the underused Sharon Tate in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, to his slightly perverse fetishization of women’s feet, as well as the general deployment of violence against women in his movies. His track record has proved to be quite a contentious topic.

However, Jackie Brown can undeniably be deemed an ode to feminism and a celebration of female empowerment. Bridget Fonda’s Melanie and LisaGay Hamilton’s Sheronda are symbolic of the director’s employment of the female character as a sex symbol, initially a useful commodity before becoming a circumventable hindrance. The film establishes a clear food chain among its characters, with Ordell and Ray Nicolette (Michael Keaton) ostensibly the apex predators, striking fear into those who cross their path, with every female in the film employed to further their male counterparts motives. And we didn’t even get to Robert De Niro.

Pam Grier’s Jackie Brown

     Miramax

Yet, in Pam Grier’s Jackie, we are offered an unlikely heroine. An air hostess for the budget “Cabo Air” and smuggler for Ordell, middle-aged Jackie’s life hasn’t exactly panned out how she’d imagined, living paycheck-to-paycheck. However, it’s when her back’s against the wall that Jackie’s unmatched intelligence comes into its own. The “she’s just a woman” underestimation is her greatest strength, an invaluable bluff. She’s like all the classic quasi-Blaxploitation characters Pam Grier once played (Foxy Brown, Coffee, etc.), hidden behind the presuppositions of the male gaze.

Her fearless audacity, total disregard for the patriarchal structure enforced upon her, and the fact she is sexually empowered are all channeled into her challenging of the status quo. Jackie Brown is relentless in her pursuit of justice. This is not only a film about a woman of a valorous disposition who outwits her callous employer, but of a Black female who outmaneuvers a system that is institutionally racist and designed to work against her. Tarantino’s third feature is built on a simple premise, Darwinian in nature: Survival of the fittest. A three-way game of chess where any wrong move will have you killed. In this game, Jackie Brown is queen.