Jackie Brown
Miramax Films | Release Date: December 25, 1997 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
64
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 23 Critic Reviews
Positive:
13
Mixed:
9
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
You savor every moment of Jackie Brown. Those who say it is too long have developed cinematic attention deficit disorder. I wanted these characters to live, talk, deceive and scheme for hours and hours. Read full review
90
NewsweekDavid Ansen
Filled with funny, gritty Tarantino lowlife gab and a respectable body count, but what is most striking is the film's gallantry and sweetness. Tarantino hits some new and touching notes with Grier and Forster. Read full review
90
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
The most exciting thing about Jackie Brown is the director's seamless transition to a less flashy, revealing style; it's well-suited to the more character-oriented focus of the film... an assured, accomplished, and very good film. Read full review
80
Washington PostStephen Hunter
The film occasionally drags -- a money transfer scene set in a department store lasts longer than several geologic epochs -- but it's so funny and the plot twists are so sudden and violent it's great fun. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
It's a straight-ahead caper flick, very cool, and very, very Seventies (although it takes place in 1995), from production and costume design on down to the soundtrack. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Tarantino keeps things moving along nicely, with a heavier dose of humor and less violence than in Pulp Fiction, but, on the whole, this movie seems more like the work of one of his wannabes than something from the director himself. Read full review
75
USA TodayMike Clark
Between Jackson's opining and De Niro's hopeless alibis when he messes up, Jackie is good for a bundle of bloody ho-ho-hos.
75
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
Its greatest assets are imaginative camera work and top-flight performances from Pam Grier as the heroine, Samuel L. Jackson as the deadly boyfriend, and Robert Forster as the bail-bondsman who falls battily in love with her. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
Each scene is staged methodically, overdeliberately, as if it concealed some payoff zinger. But the zingers don't arrive. All we see is a reasonably clever Elmore Leonard caper that needed to be treated as fast, trashy fun. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
Happily, the climax races to our rescue... 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. Read full review
70
Film ThreatRon Wells
Quentin actually made a REAL movie, with believable characters and performances, rather than just repositories for clever dialog. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
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 unless you’re hoping for something as show-offy as "Reservoir Dogs" or "Pulp Fiction." Read full review
70
VarietyTodd McCarthy
Unquestionably too long, and lacking the snap and audaciousness of the pictures that made him the talk of the town, this narratively faithful but conceptually imaginative adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel "Rum Punch" nonetheless offers an abundance of pleasures, especially in the realm of characterization and atmosphere. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
A raunchy doodle, a leisurely and easygoing diversion that goes down easy enough but is far from compelling. Read full review
60
TimeRichard Corliss
At 2 1/2 hours, it all plays like the rough assembly of a 90-min. caper film--an anecdote told at epic length. Grier, foxy lady of '70s blaxploitation, is given little chance to radiate. [22 Dec 1997, p.80]
60
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
The giddy, "anything could happen" sense that made "Pulp Fiction" and "Reservoir Dogs" so viscerally exciting is missing here. But Tarantino's first picture in nearly three years is a faithful adaptation of Elmore Leonard's "Rum Punch," and its melancholy edge is a wistful delight. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Denby
Not revolutionary or even evolutionary but enormously .... methodical. Working from an Elmore Leonard novel, Tarantino has created a gangster fiction that is never larger than life and sometimes smaller. Read full review
50
The New York TimesElvis Mitchell
But 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. Read full review
50
SalonCharles Taylor
If Jackie Brown lost 45 minutes, it might have been a snazzy entertainment. As it is, it wears out its welcome well before the end. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
The slow pace kills the sense of urgency, and the length and breadth of the film makes the story seem insignificant. Tarantino is still someone to watch, but Jackie Brown, before it's over, becomes a who-cares proposition. Read full review
50
Dallas ObserverPeter Rainer
Except for a few of his trademark time-sequence zig-zags, Tarantino's storytelling is boringly linear. At a running time of two hours and 35 minutes, it often feels like we're slogging through a B-movie that got too big for its sprockets. Read full review
50
SlateDavid Edelstein
This is ho-hum, straight-to-video material. And yet, even at its most crawlingly linear, Jackie Brown is diverting. If nothing else, I was diverted by the director's gall at stretching out those vacuous scenes. Read full review
30
The New RepublicStanley Kauffmann
It's the flat, self-exposing dud that fate often keeps in store for the initially overpraised. [26 Jan 1998, p.24]
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