filmcritic.com.

au
Reservoir Dogs
2-3 minutes

Reservoir Dogs must have been the most hyped cinema release of 1992/3. If you watch
it expecting the most nail-biting thriller ever made, the most profane and brutal
movie of the '90s, the most incisive critique of violent masculinity, or the
greatest screen performance from Harvey Keitel, you will surely be disappointed.

In one respect, however, the hype was perfectly correct. Reservoir Dogs is a
marvellous film – brash, clever, often hilarious, and completely absorbing.

This knockout debut by writer-director Quentin Tarantino is based on an old premise

familiar from many a crime movie: a gang of hoods, mostly strangers to each other,
are involved in a heist that goes horribly wrong. Once it becomes clear that there
is an informer in their midst, the players left alive work out their suspicions and
allegiances in a vast, empty warehouse.

The charm of this film is very particular. Tarantino has not fashioned a taut,
suspenseful action epic in the style of John Woo. Rather, it is a loose limbed,
deliberately ragged film, full of narrative holes and mysteries.

The plot recedes so that we can observe these male dogs at work and play: telling
stories, yelling abuse, comparing tastes in pop culture. The ensemble cast
(including Tim Roth and Steve Buscemi) is superb, and Tarantino's ear for dialogue
is wondrous.

Reservoir Dogs is not really about anything at all, apart from an almost adolescent
enthusiasm for swaggering actors and genre movies. Even its most coldly outrageous
moments (including a scene of psychopathic violence meted out by Michael Madsen)
show that Tarantino is already a dab hand at putting a song, a camera movement and
a performance together to create indelible cinema.

MORE Tarantino: Jackie Brown, Kill Bill - Vol. 1, Kill Bill - Vol. 2, Pulp Fiction

© Adrian Martin January 1994

filmcritic.com.au
Pulp Fiction
7-9 minutes

The Hero Factor

Watching Quentin Tarantino's marvellous anthology of stories, Pulp Fiction (1994),

one realises what was missing from True Romance (Tony Scott, 1993): precisely a
sense of the everyday, of the banal and the mundane, of things daggy and dorky.
Pulp Fiction has a lot of mundane stuff, and it is absolutely hilarious. Hit-man
John Travolta accidentally blows the head off a captive in the back seat of his
car; the next thirty minutes or so of screen time are devoted to the details of
cleaning up the car and getting rid of the body. It's about eight in the morning,
so they pull in to a friend's house – not a gangster, but a very ordinary, nervy,
complaining guy played by Tarantino himself. An efficiency expert in such matters,
played by a suave Harvey Keitel, is called in to direct the clean-up; he drinks
coffee and makes phone calls in Tarantino's bedroom whilst ordering Travolta and
his sidekick Samuel L. Jackson about. There is almost nothing chilling or tense
about this sequence. Like much of the film, it's almost a bent comedy of manners:
it all hinges on the fact that, very soon, Tarantino's wife will return home from
work, and if she sees a headless body in the garage and a bunch of hoods in lounge
room, she'll freak – and none of these tough guys want to deal with the
consequences of that catastrophe.

Pulp Fiction has a large dose of Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993) in it – in the
way its various stories intersect in clever, off-hand ways, in the leisurely rhythm
and timing of the piece (it's two and a half hours long), in the absolute primacy
accorded to the cast, and the very large spaces left open for the actors to develop
their characters and performance styles. With this film, it has become absolutely
clear that Tarantino's real debt is to a loose American cinema of the '70s, not the
virtuosic, hyper-stylised 1980s films of Brian De Palma, Sam Raimi or even the Coen
brothers.

Pulp Fiction is even less a thriller than his first film Reservoir Dogs (1992).
Once again, Tarantino approaches formula bits of Hollywood genres from an unusual,
backdoor angle. He truly practises the kind of 'termite art' once proposed by the
great American critic Manny Farber. He skips what in other films would be key bits
of action – like the fight which boxer Bruce Willis agrees to throw but then does
not, killing his opponent in the process. Instead of this kind of action, Tarantino
spends an inordinate amount of time on what people talk about everyday, in cars or
cafes or clubs or walking to work (even if that work is murder) – they talk about
lifestyle tastes in pop culture, problems of behavioural etiquette, philosophical
paradoxes, and a thousand 'odd spot' items of trivial knowledge. "You know what a
Big Mac is called in France?", asks Travolta. "Le Big Mac".

Pulp Fiction is also a less violent film than Reservoir Dogs, or to be more
precise, a less sadistic film in the way it preys on the audience, priming them for
the most horrible spectacles of murder and torture. There is a good deal of dread
and menace in Pulp Fiction, but it's played differently, strung out more between
those poles of the glamorously savage movie fantasy and the mundane everyday. In
effect, this new film shows Tarantino in a more thoughtful, even ethical mode. No
longer so infatuated with the thrill of the violent clinch, he's more interested in
the precise steps that would lead a person to embark upon an act of brutality. In
one of Pulp Fiction's highlights, the story titled "The Gold Watch", we follow
Bruce Willis' slow, agonised descent into a hallucinatory nightmare of violence.
Quite literally, the film tracks his steps along the very ordinary streets of his
home suburb, into and out of his apartment, into a shop, down into a horrific
cellar... each stage delivers crueller, and more phantasmagoric twists of fate upon
Willis, but also finally an opportunity for this character to size himself up
before the implications of what the film calls 'the hero factor'.

Both heroism and anti-heroism feature in Pulp Fiction, but not as grim masculine
obsessions, as in Reservoir Dogs and True Romance. The favoured themes of
contemporary violent masculine art, from Norman Mailer to Martin Scorsese –
crucifixion, redemption, masochistic blood-letting, paranoia, phobias of the self
and annihilation of the other – don't count for so much in Pulp Fiction. It is a
far more relaxed film in which the gangster-type guys sometimes look very silly,
and we are invited to enjoy this silliness. It is also a film of rare physical
grace, one that lingers on the strangely affecting dance movements of Uma Thurman,
the languid, drugged-out postures of Travolta, the piercing eyes of Samuel Jackson.
The film gets into heavy material – drug overdose, near-death experience, sudden
unexpected fatalities, and a shameful sexual secret – but always guides us gently
back to the comic and the quotidian.

Above all, Pulp Fiction is a rich character piece, far more expansive and
satisfying in this regard than Reservoir Dogs. Tarantino has already proven himself
a master of dialogue almost in the form of blank verse-beat poetry, but here the
dialogue really breathes, rather than simply crackling away like sharp static. The
film is part of a current trend in American cinema identified by critic Bill Krohn,
away from the '80s obsession with plot and action and towards the primacy of
character, a trend which Krohn sees exemplified in Spike Lee's Crooklyn (1994),
among others. Pulp Fiction's unique mesh of everyday manners, extreme ethical
issues and character depth comes together especially well in Samuel Jackson's role
– who, after he has experienced a religious miracle, holds a gun to a stranger's
head, and talks his way through the twisted moral implications of his act.

Although Quentin Tarantino still has a fair way to go before his female characters
are as rich and captivating as his male ones, Pulp Fiction is extremely gratifying
in the way it opens this director's universe up to the baby talk, the everyday
needs, pleasures and dependencies of romantic relationships. As some critics have
already pointed out, the weirdest and most comic thing about the male world of
violence and power portrayed in Pulp Fiction is that everything hinges on the whims
of women who seem the least powerful figures of all. Should you give your gangster
boss's wife a foot massage? This the kind of intricate ethical question which the
heroes of Pulp Fiction spend a lot of screen time arguing about – and for the very
good reason that the entire future of their tiny world may rest on their answer,
and how they act upon it.

MORE Tarantino: Jackie Brown, Kill Bill - Vol. 1, Kill Bill - Vol. 2

© Adrian Martin November 1994

filmcritic.com.au
Jackie Brown
5-6 minutes

Quentin Tarantino is a brave man. His Jackie Brown (adapted from Elmore Leonard's
novel Rum Punch) eschews most of the clever devices and sensational hooks
associated with his name after Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994).

Gone are the ceaselessly jokey references to pop culture, the sadistic preying on
the audience's nerves, the bloody paroxysms of gunfire and the radical
restructurings of generic plots.

Those Tarantino fans unwilling to embrace his new direction will soon be gone as
well. Jackie Brown is a laid back, low-key, almost non-violent character study. It
is in many respects a melancholic film, concerned with everyday problems like
growing old, eking out a living and figuring out who your friends really are.
Despite prevalent hype, Jackie Brown has precious little in common with the merrily
garish blaxploitation movies of the '70s.

Of course, it has exciting and virtuosic elements – such as an intricate money

exchange in a shopping mall, shown from three consecutive viewpoints. And it has
many outrageously tasteless lines and bits of business. But these attractions take
a back seat to the brooding, low-life characters and their small moves in a fairly
bleak world.

The story takes its sweet time bringing its spread of main players together into
the one mysterious, interlocking plot. Jackie (Pam Grier), an airline worker,
brings illegal money into the country for Ordell (Samuel L. Jackson), a creepy
criminal ready to kill any member of his ad hoc team if necessary. When Jackie is
arrested by Ray (Michael Keaton), she puts into place an elaborate scam that
promises to satisfy everyone's needs.

But everyone in this plot has their own agenda – and different ways of bringing it
to fruition. Ordell's right-hand man Louis (Robert De Niro, in a beautifully droll
characterisation) is tempted to misbehave by the blissfully stoned Melanie (Bridget
Fonda). The local bail bondsman, Max (Robert Forster), finds himself becoming a
confidant and co-conspirator for Jackie after he dutifully springs her from jail.
As for Ordell, he is always full of surprises.

In his previous films, Tarantino tended to cover his rather elementary grasp of
staging scenes with show-off narrative structures and bravura passages of dialogue.
In Jackie Brown he slows down the pace, adopts a largely linear plot line, and
attempts to master a more classical approach to filming actors and their
interactions. His patience and humility on this plane pay off handsomely –
particularly in the superb, deeply touching performances he elicits from Grier and
Forster.

As its constantly varied imagery of walking suggests, Jackie Brown is about the
gradual infringement of territorial borders. Through the joint forces of
circumstance, desire and sudden opportunity, Tarantino's characters find themselves
crossing over into spaces and places they have not previously inhabited. This
constant sense of entering and operating on dangerous ground is what gives Jackie
Brown its unique, finely attenuated suspense.

In particular, the border-crossing at the heart of the film relates to the

constantly shifting, ever fraught relationship between black and white culture in
America today – a difference that is explored at every level, from tastes in music
to codes of honour. Even the classic '70s song that Tarantino here appropriates as
his theme tune, Bobby Womack's "Across 110th Street", helps express this tight knot
of inter-racial tensions and dependencies.

Although the outward signs of these racial styles are up-front in the movie,
Tarantino's true dramatic exploration of his theme is understated. The secret
centre of the film is, ultimately, the strange, percolating emotional bond between
Jackie and Max – with its subtle, keen, largely unspoken rhythms of mutual
attraction and withdrawal.

I never imagined a Quentin Tarantino movie could bring a tear to my eye – but, in
its depiction of this growing, enigmatic relationship between a scheming
survivalist and her somewhat reluctant partner in crime, Jackie Brown turns a very
special and richly unexpected trick.

MORE Tarantino: Kill Bill - Vol. 1, Kill Bill - Vol. 2

© Adrian Martin March 1998

filmcritic.com.au
Kill Bill - Vol. 1
7-9 minutes

Quentin Tarantino has said that Kill Bill, his extravagant, omnivorous homage to
exploitation cinema (and its TV spin-offs), simply could not run for three hours –
hence its splitting into two 'volumes'. That would be contrary to the code of
exploitation, which ordains that films should be fast, lean and mean.

Fair enough. But what Tarantino doesn't say is that the budget for Kill Bill would
have paid for at least one hundred of the Italian Westerns, Asian action movies or
Japanese samurai flicks to which he so deliriously pays tribute here.

Rather than seeing this as a contradiction which undermines Tarantino's intention,

it would be better to take the discrepancy as a sign of what is best about Kill
Bill. It is an impossible, paradoxical object: a blockbuster B movie, a wilfully
incoherent epic that aims only for sensation. And, strangest of all, it works
perfectly well for audiences who might never have seen the movies it borrows from.

'Volume' is indeed the right tag for it, in the sense that it groans and eventually
bursts with its profusion of ideas, colours, sampled music, digressions and set
pieces. Kill Bill is, just above the underrated Down With Love (2003), this year's
most enjoyably excessive film.

To his credit, Tarantino has ventured into new territory. Gone are the endless
talk-fests, the often dry and static shots, the puzzling time-schemes of the
narrative – those hallmarks of Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994). And,
although Tarantino is still wonderful with actors, his tendency to fetishise
characters into bundles of kooky eccentricities has been streamlined into something
much purer and more iconic.

Kill Bill is action all the way. Taking on board the idea that action offers a
working definition of pure cinema – perhaps it's an absolute definition for him,
although it shouldn't be for us – Tarantino unfussily divides his film into two
kinds of events: the kills, and the time just before the kills.

The plot of the film could not be simpler. The Bride (Uma Thurman) wakes up after
four years in a coma. Requiring hardly a moment to recover and train, she seeks
revenge against the four members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (DiVA) and
their leader, Bill (an as-yet unseen David Carradine), who turned her wedding day
into a bloody carnage. Film buffs will spot the debt to François Truffaut's The
Bride Wore Black (1967) in this premise. At the end of Volume 1, it's two down,
three to go.

Who was The Groom? What, exactly, compelled Bill to such ultra-violence? How did
The Bride get along with the DiVAs – since she used to be part of their team? None
of these questions get a moment's consideration in Kill Bill, and I don't expect we
will get much further backstory in Volume 2, either.

Tarantino is after an effect of vivid, surreal immediacy, not psychological

explanations. He wants that aura of no-nonsense savagery which he has enjoyed in
many exploitation movies that set archetypal figures on their path to death and
destruction.

Yet, for all its simplicity, this is also an extremely modern film. In its zaniness
it approaches the recent Pistol Opera (2001) by one of Tarantino's all-time idols,
the Japanese master Seijun Suzuki.

Although the through-line of the action is as clear as it can possibly be –

hilariously summarised on a piece of paper where The Bride crosses off the name of
each person she kills – Tarantino also breaks up the action with a profusion of
introductory, numbered titles. He even presents one significant flashback as a
long, stirring sequence of anime.

In an era when the likes of Hong Kong's John Woo are trying to become more
classical and restrained within the Hollywood system, Tarantino is becoming more
experimental. The happy result is evident from the first major scene of Kill Bill,
where The Bride interrupts the suburban idyll of Vernita Green aka Copperhead
(Vivica A. Fox).
This brutal encounter is rendered in a barrage of fast cuts, broad gestures and
deafening sound-explosions. Tarantino offers us a single, gorgeous reminder of the
homely milieu he portrayed in his previous Jackie Brown (1997), when the fight
stops dead to show, through the front window, a school bus dropping off
Copperhead's little daughter.

At the other end of the film, the long showdown between The Bride and the Crazy 88
in the House of Blue Leaves – a gauntlet that has to be run before reaching O'Ren-
Ishii aka Cottonmouth (Lucy Liu) – has not even the slightest vestige of everyday
life. This overwhelming climax is viewed primarily from two vantage points: at foot
level (Tarantino loves the vulnerability of feet, and the tension created by the
simple act of walking); and from overhead, the camera giving us a distant,
architectural plan of events.

Meanwhile, the music – an assortment of tracks mostly taken from other soundtracks,
plus some fiddled samples by The RZA (who previously scored Jarmusch's Ghost Dog) –
drives the action into a splendid frenzy. Perhaps Tarantino could learn from
Australian editor Jill Bilcock's recent advice – that working to music tends to
draw out the cuts unnecessarily – because the most ecstatic parts of Kill Bill are
those which proceed solely with a symphony of second-to-second noises.

Kill Bill is an incredibly violent film. There are decapitations, scalpings,

severed limbs aplenty and huge, cascading streams of blood forever spattering The
Bride. (The movie is a tribute to Thurman's stamina.) For a little extra
provocation, Tarantino throws in (albeit discreetly) a touch of gruesome sexual
perversion.

But none of this is disturbing or particularly confronting. In fact, from start to

end, this brilliantly directed, ultra-violent spectacle is exhilarating fun. For
once, Tarantino's fan-boy protest – which in the '90s seemed like a hollow evasion
– rings true: it's all just comic book fantasy. This time, Tarantino has achieved
such total artificiality that he doesn't even need to worry about social issues
like race, class or gender.

The most surprising aspect of Kill Bill is that, for all its over-the-top humour,
it never becomes a camp parody of exploitation cinema. The recurring sight of The
Bride advancing on her prey, over and over, may be pretty meaningless in the cosmic
scheme of things, but it is, all the same, weirdly uplifting.

Kill Bill - Vol. 2

© Adrian Martin October 2003

filmcritic.com.au
Kill Bill - Vol. 2
6-7 minutes

Quentin Tarantino must have known he was taking a big gamble releasing his violent,
revenge epic Kill Bill in two parts. In fact, it must have seemed a double-or-
nothing bet: either he would double the takings and the acclaim, or cancel them
out.

So, from the first frame, this Vol. 2 has its work cut out for it, trying to
convince sceptical or cynical viewers that this story is really worth another trip
to a cinema. And the very start is shaky, even for a huge fan of Vol. 1 like me.
The Bride (Uma Thurman), in a black-and-white segment which forms the basis for the
trailer, drives and speaks directly to camera. She refers to her previous exploits
as that movie we have already seen, speaking in the most florid language of
sensational, B movie overkill.

Things get only marginally better in an elaborate segment of backstory – a

flashback to the church massacre during a rehearsal for the Bride's wedding.
Tarantino's moves here – such as the withdrawal of the camera away from the site of
bloodshed – serve only to remind us of similar, better tricks in his earlier films.

But this scene at least manages to give us our first significant look at, and
listen to, Bill (David Carradine). Slowly but surely, his place in the Bride's
tumultuous life will be revealed – and with this information, all the deep themes
of the story as a whole will magnificently unfold.

Whereas Vol. 1 seemed a merry but essentially meaningless experience, Vol. 2 has
some big ideas in reserve about the nature of love, commitment and murder. By the
time of the ultimate, remarkable showdown between these ex-lovers, there is even a
touch of the grandly mythic.

Vol. 2 is a very different film from Vol. 1 – an initially disconcerting but

finally very satisfying transformation. There is none of the jet-setting lyricism
of Vol. 1, no scenes in Tokyo, no over-the-top exoticism. Set firmly on an
American-Mexican axis, it reminds one occasionally of Robert Rodriguez's far
inferior Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003) – and indeed Tarantino's pal Rodriguez
pops up in the music credits.

Part of the thrill and charm of Vol. 1 was its unapologetically fragmentary
construction – as if it were a succession of set-pieces snatched at random from a
dozen exploitation cinema classics. Vol. 2 gears down to accommodate the hyper-
declamatory, blabbermouth rhythm familiar from Tarantino's earlier works.

Just about every mystery left hanging in Vol. 1 finds its explanation here –
especially those pertaining to the Bride and Bill. The sorts of words she offers
him ("I would have leapt, by motorcycle, onto a blazing train for you!") start out
sounding camp and corny, but eventually the film perfectly succeeds in hitting a
delirious note of pure melodrama.

Vol. 2 returns us to Tarantino's first love for characterisation – and wizened old
character actors. Michael Parks is especially impressive as Esteban, a brothel
owner who facilitates the Bride's path to Bill. Even the glimpse of the Bride's
quotidian gal pals – feisty but far removed from her former bloody milieu – is a
treat.

The best scenes in Vol. 1 succeeded through excess – huge sets, a hundred extras,
extravagant action. By contrast, the most ingenious and haunting scene in Vol. 2
takes place in almost total darkness, and draws all its power from a single,
mounting sound effect – the heaping of dirt on the grave in which the Bride is
being buried alive by Budd (Michael Madsen). And a major plot incident is
ingeniously withdrawn from the Bride and handed to her brutal nemesis, Elle (Daryl
Hannah).

Just to twist the screw of tension of the burial scene a little further, Tarantino
decides to cut away at its highpoint for an extended flashback. This splendid
narrative digression takes us through the Bride's advanced martial arts training
under the stern hand of Pei Mai (Gordon Liu). Replete with over-saturated colours
(as in an old, worn print of a '70s movie) and jolting, comic zooms in and out of
faces, the scene relays and expands the pleasure of the scenes with the venerated
swordmaker in Vol. 1.
In fact, it is only now, on seeing both parts, that we can appreciate the larger
design of Tarantino's structure for the Bride's journey. Scenes and elements are
not only relayed and expanded, they are (as narrative theorists say) anamorphosed.
This is particularly the case in the relation between the first murder we see in
Vol. 1, that of Vernita (Vivica A. Fox), and the finale, when at last the Bride
reaches Bill.

Without spoiling the plot surprise for those who cannot see it coming, everything
in the former scene that relates to daily, domestic life is given a heightened,
comprehensive meaning in the latter scene.

The surest sign of Vol. 2's difference from Vol. 1 is that the Bride takes
possession of her real name, on top of all the crazy tags she has already
accumulated. And in the very last moment of the story she receives an extra,
surprise name, the homeliest and loveliest of them all.

MORE Tarantino: Jackie Brown, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs

© Adrian Martin April 2004

filmcritic.com.au
Jackie Brown
5-6 minutes

Quentin Tarantino is a brave man. His Jackie Brown (adapted from Elmore Leonard's
novel Rum Punch) eschews most of the clever devices and sensational hooks
associated with his name after Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994).

Gone are the ceaselessly jokey references to pop culture, the sadistic preying on
the audience's nerves, the bloody paroxysms of gunfire and the radical
restructurings of generic plots.

Those Tarantino fans unwilling to embrace his new direction will soon be gone as
well. Jackie Brown is a laid back, low-key, almost non-violent character study. It
is in many respects a melancholic film, concerned with everyday problems like
growing old, eking out a living and figuring out who your friends really are.
Despite prevalent hype, Jackie Brown has precious little in common with the merrily
garish blaxploitation movies of the '70s.

Of course, it has exciting and virtuosic elements – such as an intricate money

exchange in a shopping mall, shown from three consecutive viewpoints. And it has
many outrageously tasteless lines and bits of business. But these attractions take
a back seat to the brooding, low-life characters and their small moves in a fairly
bleak world.

The story takes its sweet time bringing its spread of main players together into
the one mysterious, interlocking plot. Jackie (Pam Grier), an airline worker,
brings illegal money into the country for Ordell (Samuel L. Jackson), a creepy
criminal ready to kill any member of his ad hoc team if necessary. When Jackie is
arrested by Ray (Michael Keaton), she puts into place an elaborate scam that
promises to satisfy everyone's needs.

But everyone in this plot has their own agenda – and different ways of bringing it
to fruition. Ordell's right-hand man Louis (Robert De Niro, in a beautifully droll
characterisation) is tempted to misbehave by the blissfully stoned Melanie (Bridget
Fonda). The local bail bondsman, Max (Robert Forster), finds himself becoming a
confidant and co-conspirator for Jackie after he dutifully springs her from jail.
As for Ordell, he is always full of surprises.

In his previous films, Tarantino tended to cover his rather elementary grasp of
staging scenes with show-off narrative structures and bravura passages of dialogue.
In Jackie Brown he slows down the pace, adopts a largely linear plot line, and
attempts to master a more classical approach to filming actors and their
interactions. His patience and humility on this plane pay off handsomely –
particularly in the superb, deeply touching performances he elicits from Grier and
Forster.

As its constantly varied imagery of walking suggests, Jackie Brown is about the
gradual infringement of territorial borders. Through the joint forces of
circumstance, desire and sudden opportunity, Tarantino's characters find themselves
crossing over into spaces and places they have not previously inhabited. This
constant sense of entering and operating on dangerous ground is what gives Jackie
Brown its unique, finely attenuated suspense.

In particular, the border-crossing at the heart of the film relates to the

constantly shifting, ever fraught relationship between black and white culture in
America today – a difference that is explored at every level, from tastes in music
to codes of honour. Even the classic '70s song that Tarantino here appropriates as
his theme tune, Bobby Womack's "Across 110th Street", helps express this tight knot
of inter-racial tensions and dependencies.

Although the outward signs of these racial styles are up-front in the movie,
Tarantino's true dramatic exploration of his theme is understated. The secret
centre of the film is, ultimately, the strange, percolating emotional bond between
Jackie and Max – with its subtle, keen, largely unspoken rhythms of mutual
attraction and withdrawal.

I never imagined a Quentin Tarantino movie could bring a tear to my eye – but, in
its depiction of this growing, enigmatic relationship between a scheming
survivalist and her somewhat reluctant partner in crime, Jackie Brown turns a very
special and richly unexpected trick.

MORE Tarantino: Kill Bill - Vol. 1, Kill Bill - Vol. 2

© Adrian Martin March 1998