Jackie Brown (1997)

All Critics (75) | Top Critics (19) | Fresh (70) | Rotten (10) | DVD (39)

The tale is filled with funny, gritty Tarantino lowlife gab and a respectable body count, but what is most striking is the film's gallantry and sweetness.

March 13, 2007 Full Review | Comment

David Ansen

Newsweek

Top Critic

Quentin Tarantino puts together a fairly intricate and relatively uninvolving money-smuggling plot, but his cast is so good that you probably won't feel cheated.

March 13, 2007 Full Review | Comment

Jonathan Rosenbaum

Chicago Reader

Top Critic

The film is more Jarmusch than Peckinpah -- its soul is in the minutiae.

March 13, 2007 Full Review | Comment

David Edelstein

Slate

Top Critic

Offers an abundance of pleasures, especially in the realm of characterization and atmosphere.

March 13, 2007 Full Review | Comment

Todd McCarthy

Variety

Top Critic

It's like a scuzz-bucket film noir directed by Stanley Kubrick at his most static-mesmeric.

February 27, 2007 Full Review | Comment

Owen Gleiberman

Entertainment Weekly

Top Critic

Working from an Elmore Leonard novel, Tarantino has created a gangster fiction that is never larger than life and sometimes smaller.

August 7, 2004 Full Review | Comment (1)

David Denby

New York Magazine

Top Critic

A much moodier, slower pace from Tarantino's other work, but Jackie Brown is one enjoyable flick that rewards its audience with each viewing.

January 29, 2012 Full Review | Comment

R. L. Shaffer

IGN DVD

might be his best film

November 13, 2011 Full Review | Comment

Walter Chaw

Film Freak Central

Succeeds as a witty Elmore Leonard crime story...but also as a surprisingly affecting mid-life romance. [Blu-ray]

October 20, 2011 Full Review | Comment

Peter Canavese

Groucho Reviews

Jackie Brown glides into the digital age as beautiful as ever, and its Blu-ray release offers yet another reason to revisit director Quentin Tarantino's masterpiece on unrequited love.

October 12, 2011 Full Review | Comment

Glenn Heath Jr.

Slant Magazine

Tarantino's films aren't so much stories as strings of anecdotes: movie moments, urban myths, conversations strewn with pop culture references.

October 4, 2011 Full Review | Comment

Sean Axmaker

Parallax View

Mellower Tarantino still has sex, drugs, swearing, murder.

December 7, 2010 Full Review | Comment

Charles Cassady

Common Sense Media

Loaded with all the crisp dialogue, trademark camera work, and memorable characters that we've come to expect from every Tarantino film.

August 12, 2010 Full Review | Comment

Jason Zingale

Bullz-Eye.com

Consider it a superb Elmore Leonard adaptation by a filmmaker who knows how to serve someone else's material while making it his own.

September 24, 2007 Full Review | Comment

Rob Gonsalves

eFilmCritic.com

That this modest crime thriller can't quite live up to its audacious dance across so many strata of hip and hommage and self-referential cool it makes your head spin is hardly a surprise, or even a criticism.

March 13, 2007 Full Review | Comment

Maitland McDonagh

TV Guide's Movie Guide

When you absolutely, positively got to thrill every mother****er in the room, accept no substitutes. Jackie Brown is the AK-47 in Tarantino's arsenal.

August 20, 2006 Full Review | Comment

Nick Davis

Nick's Flick Picks

Tarantino's tribute to creative influences, writer Elmor Leonard and blaxploitation star Grier, results in a more mature but less audacious film; last shot, taken from Queen Christina, only shows how magical Garbo was and Grier isn't

August 10, 2006 Full Review | Comment

Emanuel Levy

EmanuelLevy.Com

• 1. Ordell Robbie: Let me give you the reason, motherfucker! The reason is your ass ain't worth a shit no more!
  2. Louis Gara: Hey, you better fucking back off, man! [Louis gets shot by Ordell]
  3. Ordell Robbie: What the fuck happened to you, man? Her ass used to be beautiful. [Ordell shoots Louis again, killing him, and leaves the van]
  – Submitted by John D (3 months ago)
• 1. Ordell Robbie: I didn't know you liked the Delfonics.
  2. Max Cherry: Yeah, they're pretty good.
  – Submitted by sean b (3 months ago)
• 1. Max Cherry: I'll bet, besides maybe an afro, you look exactly how you did at 29.
  2. Jackie Brown: Well, my ass ain't the same.
  3. Max Cherry: Bigger?
  4. Jackie Brown: Yeah.
  5. Max Cherry: Ain't nothin' wrong with that!
  – Submitted by Gavin S (4 months ago)
• 1. Jackie Brown: Shut your raggedy-ass up, and sit the fuck down!
  – Submitted by Gavin S (4 months ago)
• 1. Beaumont Livingston: Man, you must be out of your fuckin' mind if you think I'm gonna get in this dirty-ass trunk.
  2. Ordell Robbie: We ain't going nowhere but to Koreatown, man. You ain't gonna be locked in here no more than ten minutes.
  3. Beaumont Livingston: I ain't ridin' in no trunk for no minute, man.
  – Submitted by Gavin S (4 months ago)