Jackie Brown is really an overall strange movie, not in subject matter but in style and content. It's an obvious Tarantino movie, with the ghetto conversations about seemingly superfluous topics and the long, meandering narrative with plenty of plot-twists and episodes, some labeled on-screen as such. It's really enjoyable despite its 2 1/2 hour run time, which actually seems to fly by without so much as a stutter in plotting.
This movie really made me realize just how great Tarantino is with story structure. Even his critics can't say that the man has such a distinctive and confident poise behind the camera, and such a grasp on the intricacies of typical story structure. He seems to be having so much fun with this movie, and effortlessly makes the story glide from plot-twist to plot-twist. It would be so funny to see what a convoluted mess this movie may have been in the hands of most other directors--but Tarantino doesn't even let you think about how extensive the plot is, he just keeps it moving.
All of the players are outstanding, the stand-outs being Pam Grier as a seductive and powerful Jackie Brown and Robert Forster as the lonely and quietly tortured Max Cherry. This is perhaps the best performance of the film, as he brings the coolness of a typical noir hero while hiding the sadness and longing behind his weathered eyes. Samuel L. Jackson is the epitome of cool, as usual, and perfectly demonstrates his outstanding charisma even when the role almost seems to cool for its own good. Even so, he's a very effective "baddie." Robert DeNiro is gives a nicely understated performance as an ex-con and now stoner who has trouble remembering where his car is during a sting (in a very, very funny, very Tarantino scene). Michael Keaton gives a convincing performance as an ATF agent trying to nail Samuel L. Jackson's character.
Something interesting I found about this film is how it mixed so many genres of movies while still having a distinctive Tarantino tone. Though it's seemingly advertised as a blaxploitation homage, it is more distinctively neo-noir. There are the very obvious blaxploitation elements, however, that keeps you from thinking that it is completely noir. And, obviously, it is a gangster "sting" flick. It is sort of fun to tweak conventions as to who would be the set hero of the film: Basic noir conventions would say that Max Cherry is the hero, being a weathered and collected old soul and trying to romance a mysterious and bad-ass woman. However, you might also say that Jackie would be the noir hero, in that she's definitely the main character, and is just as weathered and calm as Max Cherry, and is always smoking a cigarette. In terms of blaxploitation, Jackie is definitely the hero, with Samuel L. Jackson's Ordell being the trademark bad-guy. It's interesting that Tarantino made Ordell such a main character in the actual film, since you know him as much as you know anyone else in the story, and he is quite obviously a villain.
All in all, this may be remembered as Tarantino's weakest film of the 90s, though it is still excellent. His characteristic sequences are what make the film great, such as the scene in which Chris Tucker makes a cameo. It is such a quietly hysterical scene, with its seemingly pointless discussion and debate of a random topic followed by a quick and brutal piece of gangsterdom. It's Tarantino having fun with the style that he created in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, and it's really a blast to watch.