JACKIE BROWN (1997)

By Gary Deane

Hollywood has long struggled to capture the essence of Elmore Leonard’s fiction—if it has ever truly tried. Although many of his thirty-odd westerns and crime novels have been adapted for the screen, little of his distinctive voice as a writer and storyteller has survived the translation. Most filmmakers have taken a superficial approach, focusing only on the obvious elements: a flawed but principled lead with the right mix of charm and street smarts, a sharp-tongued woman who’s often two steps ahead, and a gallery of crooks who manage to botch even the best-laid plans. 

 

What gets lost is Leonard’s subtle command of tone and his gift for dialogue that reveals character as much as it propels plot. His narratives thrive on moral ambiguity and conversational rhythms that resist Hollywood’s tendency toward neat moral arcs and tidy resolutions. In Leonard’s world, we start by puzzling over how the characters connect and what they’re after; then, just as the picture seems to come into focus, everything shifts. Few adaptations—Get Shorty (1995), Out of Sight (1998), and the series Justified among them—have managed to preserve that delicate balance of irony, realism, and surprise that defines Leonard’s storytelling. 

 

Leonard's novels appear film-ready, with his books structured like treatments. However, millions of studio dollars have only resulted in such piles of stink as The Big Bounce (1969), a weak-minded melodrama, and later a crudely-struck remake released in 2004 billed as a "crime comedy’". That two such failures would have been born of the same book suggests that Leonard sometimes might not be the smartest choice in a high-concept world. 

That said, not every film based on Leonard's titles has been a waste of time -- just most, seemingly unable to negotiate Leonard’s tight straddle between mayhem and drollery, never overplaying his hand.  Of the better ones, John Frankenheimer’s 52 Pick-Up (1986) a grim neo-noir adapted from an earlier Leonard book, didn’t even attempt that negotiation, offering a hard-edged reading that backed away from any irony. Directed by Steven Soderbergh, Out of Sight (1998)  was fashioned as moody and romantic and settled for quirky charm. Though it wasn’t lame, the movie unfortunately still felt a bit limp.

That leaves Jackie Brown, released in 1997, still the only film adaptation able to lay claim to having captured Elmore Leonard where he lived and breathed. Based on Leonard’s book Rum Punch, the movie features Pam Grier as an airline stewardess who’s picked up by Federal agents at LAX with amounts of cash and drugs. These were supposed to be delivered to a low-level felon, Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson), who isn’t going to believe that she hasn't by now ratted on him. Realizing this, she decides to go one better and set him up, along with his sidekick, Louis Gara (Robert De Niro), and Ordell’s stoner girlfriend (Bridget Fonda). Jackie needs to come out of this better than she came in (not all that great) and enlists the help of Max Cherry (Robert Forster), a bail bondsman Ordell has hired to get her out following the bust.

While Director Quentin Tarantino takes some liberties with the story, no damage is done. The novel’s Jackie Burke is now Jackie Brown,  no longer a trim, blonde, 30-ish cougar but an older black fox with ample curves. Tarantino also relocates the story from West Palm Beach to Los Angeles and messes with countless details. However, the result is a near-perfect film iteration of Elmore Leonard's good work, one in which Tarantino cools his directorial jets and settles for straight-ahead story-telling and a less inflated approach to characterization.

It’s often been an authentic sense of character that's been absent in the films adapted from Leonard’s crime novels (his westerns have done better). MovieGet Shorty and Be Cool jettisoned Leonard’s smart and nervy characterizations in favor of dumbed-down caricatures. Tarantino clearly better understands the complexity of the folks that inhabit Leonard’s world. In Jackie Brown, it's straight-shooter Max who’s prepared to dirty himself to right wrongs for Jackie and maybe to again find romance. Or it's criminals like Ordell, a stone killer who is as mesmerizing as he is frightening.

Tarantino has his actors command the screen without showiness -- just as Leonard’s characters command the page. However, Tarantino does the author one better by making Jackie more resonant and memorable due to the casting of Pam Grier. Though Grier had been starring since the blaxploitation days (Foxy Brown, Coffy),  she’s never been the actress (and the star) she is in Jackie Brown,  

as she apprehends the poignancy of a middle-aged woman who’s managed to get by on her looks and now has to trade on her wits to escape her dead-end life.

Apart from racial identity, there’s nothing black and white about these characters or the situations in which they find themselves -- though it should be noted that questions of identity appeared central to Leonard.  He'd put race upfront from the time of his early westerns and also wrote more authentic female heroines into his crime novels than anyone writing in any genre. His affinities to popular culture and music always were those of generations half his age. It’s not hard to see why Tarantino would be preternaturally drawn to Leonard, starting with the director’s own obsession with genre idioms and pop artifacts.

To his credit, Tarantino also avoids flagrant displays of violence in the film, even to the point of taking what there is in the book down a notch. When Ordell takes care of his ‘associate’, Beaumont Livingstone (Chris Tucker), whom he suspects of snitching, it happens at a distance. When Louis suddenly shoots Melanie for getting on his case one too many times, it's off-screen  When Ordell in turn kills Louis for shooting Melanie, it's inside a vehicle and, again, a way off. The violence (though never its threat) is almost incidental, similar to how Leonard had written it.

Though he’d always insisted he didn't do neo-noir, Tarantino obviously recognized Rum Punch’s story for what it was -- not just some hard-boiled hustle-and-flow but something real and raw and human. Which offered comfort to those believers in Leonard, recognizing there are some who tend to regard him as a formulist and, for purposes here, not enough a noirist. However, Leonard, from the beginning, transcended formula to create a genre category unto itself, case-hardened pulp noir thrillers graced with both a dark humor and the heartbeat of real human beings. Jack Brown is all that and more.