Sentinel Digital Desk
Tarantino plugs deep into the movie and TV industry of Los Angeles in 1969, when the fading embers of the studio system mingled with the hipster vibe of the New Hollywood, when the rise of spangly fashion and Top 40 made the world glow and the hidden presence of Charles Manson made it tremble
The movie has a gaudy nastiness that won’t quit, from the intricate jam session of trash-talking girls that kicks off the action to Kurt Russell’s death-rattle performance as Stuntman Mike to the insane mutilating brutality of the car crash (set to the jaunty strains of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich’s “Hold Tight!”) that climaxes the film’s first half.
“Jackie Brown” is the one Tarantino movie with soul, hinging on a romantic connection between a desperate flight attendant (Grier) and the bail bondsman (Robert Forster) who helps her rip off her gun-running boss (Samuel L. Jackson). Tarantino stretches time to new extremes, while inviting audiences to bask in the pleasure of his characters’ company.
Somehow, the homage-driven auteur had managed to deliver a film that seemed simultaneously fresh and familiar, surprising in its tone and style, even as it expanded Tarantino’s peerless ability to recast pulp and B-movie tropes as postmodern art.
Tarantino’s hypnotically enthralling World War II epic takes its title from a 1978 Italian action-combat potboiler, but this is still the one QT movie with an aesthetic rooted in the ’60s — in the last fully functioning moment of the studio system, when directors like Robert Aldrich (“The Dirty Dozen”) and Brian G. Hutton (“Kelly’s Heroes”) found a trip-wired version of old-guard Hollywood in the spectacle of fighting the Nazis.
A group of tough-nut crooks sit around a coffee shop debating the inner meaning of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”; we’d never seen that one before. But then those same lowlifes, in their skinny black ties, walk toward us in jerky slow motion in the L.A. sun, accompanied by the George Baker Selection’s “Little Green Bag” — a sequence that hits your eyes and ears with the force of “Be My Baby” kicking off “Mean Streets.”
Exuberantly self-aware. Shamelessly indulgent. Endlessly quotable. From the opening scene, in which Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer spend four minutes making plans before sticking up an L.A. diner, “Pulp Fiction” invites audiences to recognize that they are watching a Movie.