The 20th Anniversary of "Jackie Brown"

I had to get this one in before 2017 ends.

There has been some note given that Christmas season 2017 brings the 20th Anniversary of Quentin Tarantino's Christmas 1997 release Jackie Brown.

20 years. Jeez. That used to be a lot. "Jackie Brown" feels like it came out "a few years ago," but we all know how that works.

It is my favorite QT film. There are a few famous reasons for that: it is his least violent film(even though four characters are murdered or violently killed) , it is his only adaptation of someone else's work (Elmore Leonard's Rum Punch, moved from sunny Florida to sunny working class Los Angeles), it has -- after the Radical Youth feeling of Pulp Fiction -- a decidedly middle-aged vibe in its stars and its viewpoint.

It is also very funny -- a QT trademark. And it has a great middle-aged love story between Pam Grier and Robert Forster(two Hollywood also-ran stars). And it has a nice mix of black and white racial intersects.

But mostly...its "Rio Bravo, 1997." That 1959 Howard Hawks buddy movie-screwball comedy-romantic Western is a favorite of QT's and he here found roughly the same style and feeling. Both Jackie Brown and Rio Bravo are "overlong as plot films" -- but just right as character films. Both films take the time to digress on long dialogue scenes that are comfortable and warming(rather than just irritating as happens in Inglorious Basterds, Django, and The Hateful Eight.) Both films create worlds that you never really want to leave, and love returning to.

QT said of Rio Bravo(paraphrased): "It had two lives. One was that first weekend and weeks of release in 1959. The second is forever, as a movie we can put in and watch and enjoy anytime we want to re-live that great feeling."

Goes for Jackie Brown, too.

Pam Grier got the lead in the film, but Robert Forster stole it. His wry, sad-faced bail bondsman Max Cherry is All Good Things: manly, centered, caring, decent...quietly cool. If you are a man of a certain age, you watch "Jackie Brown" AND Jackie Brown through Forster's eyes.

I recall Forster being stuck in the Chuck Norris action film "The Delta Force" as a murderous Middle Eastern terrorist hijacking a plane. You were meant to hate the guy, and to love how Norris gave him a slow death but, m problem was -- I found Forster's FACE too...likeable. And sad. He was the most sympathetic looking terrorist you ever saw.

And finally QT cast him just right in Jackie Brown.

Samuel L. Jackson, Bridget Fonda, and Robert DeNiro are the comic-menacing trio of villains in Jackie Brown. One gets used to them as kind of a mean bumbling team, and the comic conceit of the movie is that they all seem to get along fine. Until they don't. Because two of them are ex-cons and one is a Stone Cold Beyotch.

Its DeNiro who is incredibly funny: he spends 85% of the film just sitting there with this blank look on his face, sort of getting what's going on around him, sort of not. And as one critic said, "Once DeNiro finally swings into action, he falls down and goes boom." I'll say. And his sad-sack dummy proves most lethal just when you least expect it. DeNiro wanted to play Max Cherry, but accepted this supporting role instead. And owned it -- as The Biggest Star in the Film Except He's Not This Time.

Samuel L. Jackson does his QT Samuel L. Jackson thing and plays quite the villain. An early single take scene where he talks Chris Tucker into getting into the trunk of his car is a model of speechifying , comedy and menace -- though its Tucker who gets the best line. Confronted with having to get into a car trunk, Tucker says "You catch a n-word offguard with this sh..t"

The 70's soul music is palpable -- The Delfonics. The caper at the Del Amo Mall in Torrance, California, is fun. The cast is sublime. Robert Forster gets redemption for the ages, DeNiro makes you laugh start to scary finish. Pam Grier proves she was always a star, everybody else(including Michael Keaton in a cop role he REPEATED in "Out of Sight" the next year) is great.

Jackie Brown is Rio Bravo. I just watched it and it delivered the warm goods yet again.

QT's best film. Likely ever, given where he's gone and where he's headed.

And 20 years ago doesn't seem very long at all.