Jackie Brown: Critic Reviews

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

For all its enthusiasm, this film isn't sharp enough to afford all the time it wastes on small talk, long drives, trips to the mall and favorite songs played on car radios.

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

This is the movie that proves Tarantino is the real thing, and not just a two-film wonder boy.

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.

[A] surprisingly sluggish Tarantino piece.

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

Beyond the grasp of most directors, this is tour de force stuff -- definitely meriting the price of admission and almost worth the three-year wait.

[Tarantino] wanted to give Grier a role worthy of her, and he has. If only he'd given her a movie worthy of her as well.

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

An entertaining diversion, but not a masterpiece.

A leisurely and easygoing diversion that goes down easy enough but is far from compelling.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

These are unquestionably Tarantino's greatest characters, and the actors eat them up with verve.

Tarantino's finest, most mature movie to date.

Forster and Grier have real chemistry in their limited time together on-screen. Forster has star-quality presence and is used well by Tarantino.

Those who were waiting to see Quentin Tarantino, a k a the most annoying man in Hollywood, fall flat on his face are likely to be disappointed with Jackie Brown.

As an exercise in style, Jackie Brown is a refinement of the innovative elements Tarantino employed in the Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.

Give (Jackson) the best-actor Oscar for his picture-perfect performance as a gun-running criminal whose vocabulary is as vulgar as his occupation.