Jackie Brown: Every Major Performance, Ranked

Every Quentin Tarantino movie borrows from previous movies – like Django Unchained taking its hero’s name from Sergio Corbucci’s Django, or Inglourious Basterds taking its misspelt title from Enzo G. Castellari’s The Inglorious Bastards – but Jackie Brown is, as of yet, the writer-director’s only straight adaptation of previous source material. It was based on the Elmore Leonard novel Rum Punch, with the title changed to suit the blaxploitation aesthetic that Tarantino brought to the table.

With a cast featuring blaxploitation legend Pam Grier, Tarantino regular Samuel L. Jackson, Oscar nominee Robert Forster, and an uncharacteristically subdued Robert De Niro, Jackie Brown has some fantastic performances. So, here are all the major performances in Jackie Brown, ranked.

8 Michael Bowen As Det. Mark Dargus

Michael Bowen plays the detective who teams up with Michael Keaton’s ATF agent character, Ray Nicolette, and ends up getting duped by Jackie when she claims that Melanie ran off with the money. For the most part, Bowen plays second fiddle to Keaton throughout the movie, so he doesn’t really stand out on his own.

Bowen has since gone on to re-collaborate with Tarantino on Kill Bill, in which he played the perverted hospital orderly Buck, and Django Unchained, in which he played one of the trackers.

7 Bridget Fonda As Melanie Ralston

The point of the Melanie character is that she’s really annoying. She’s so annoying that Louis randomly decides to shoot her dead in the middle of a parking lot during the climactic job.

So, while Bridget Fonda does a good job of bringing Melanie’s irritating nature to the screen, almost getting the audience on board with Louis’ snap decision to kill her, that’s kind of a negative thing.

6 Chris Tucker As Beaumont Livingston

One year before he would join the big leagues with a lead role alongside Jackie Chan in Rush Hour, Chris Tucker played a minor role in Jackie Brown. Beaumont Livingston doesn’t last very long, as he’s picked up by Ordell Robbie, driven out to a secluded spot, and killed.

But Tucker plays the role brilliantly, shining with his signature comic personality before a wide audience was familiar with that comic personality. Tarantino is famed for casting fading stars in his movies, like Pam Grier in the titular role of this one, but he doesn’t get enough credit for casting rising stars in early roles.

5 Michael Keaton As Ray Nicolette

Long before he’d be considered Oscar-worthy talent due to powerhouse performances in films like Birdman and Spotlight, Michael Keaton played an ATF agent named Ray Nicolette in Jackie Brown. It’s one of Keaton’s most nuanced and underrated turns.

Elmore Leonard, who wrote the novel that Jackie Brown is based on, is known for having a huge cast of characters that dip in and out of each other’s stories. Nicolette reappeared in Out of Sight, which was adapted for the screen by Steven Soderbergh, and Keaton reprised the role in that film, bringing a little chunk of the interconnective tissue of the Leonard-verse to the big screen.

4 Robert De Niro As Louis Gara

Apparently, when Robert De Niro first got a hold of the script for Jackie Brown, he was drawn to the role of Max Cherry. Tarantino had already cast Robert Forster as Max and didn’t want to replace him as he was perfectly suited to the part, but as a huge fan of Taxi Driver, he still wanted to work with De Niro, so he offered him the role of Louis instead.

Considering Louis wasn’t the role he initially wanted to play, De Niro does a fine job of playing the character as a cool-as-ice, hard-as-nails badass. De Niro transferred the stony-faced sternness of characters like Max Cady to the role of Louis.

3 Samuel L. Jackson As Ordell Robbie

After the success of Pulp Fiction, it would’ve been easy for Tarantino to write a second-rate Jules Winnfield for Samuel L. Jackson to play in Jackie Brown. That role made him an icon (and an Oscar nominee) a couple of years earlier, so Tarantino could’ve taken what worked about that character – sweary monologues, violent outbursts, a hot temper – and cloned him for a role in Jackie Brown.

But Ordell Robbie is a different kind of character. He doesn’t fly off the handle; he’ll just quietly raise his gun and kill someone, apropos of nothing. He still has monologues, but they’re more laidback than Jules’ monologues. Jackson has said that Ordell is one of his favorite characters he’s played, while Tarantino has called him the soul of the movie.

2 Robert Forster As Max Cherry

Subtlety is not one of Tarantino’s strong suits. His movies work best when the screen is painted with blood and dozens of guns are being fired and Samuel L. Jackson is yelling the word “motherf*cker.” But Robert Forster’s Oscar-nominated performance in Jackie Brown brings a significant degree of nuance to the table.

Tarantino’s love stories are usually based on genre tropes, like Vincent Vega and Mia Wallace’s flirtations in Pulp Fiction, or follow the structure of a fairy tale, like Django and Broomhilda’s marriage in Django Unchained. But thanks to Forster’s believable on-screen chemistry with Pam Grier, the feelings between Jackie and Max feel authentic.

1 Pam Grier As Jackie Brown

When Pam Grier first came into Quentin Tarantino’s office to discuss the role of Jackie Brown, she was surprised to find the walls covered in posters for her movies. She thought he put them up on the walls just because she was coming over, but he told her that those posters were always up there. When Tarantino has a particular affinity for an actor, because he grew up adoring their movies, like Harvey Keitel or Kurt Russell, then he gives them a lot of freedom with their performances.

That was certainly the case with Grier, whose turn as Jackie led to a much-deserved career comeback. Grier doesn’t play Jackie as an air stewardess in over her head; she plays her as a quick-witted criminal mastermind. And her likability makes her one of Tarantino’s easiest protagonists to root for.

About The Author

Ben Sherlock
(3464 Articles Published)

Ben Sherlock is a writer, comedian, independent filmmaker, and Burt Reynolds enthusiast. He writes lists for Screen Rant and features and reviews for Game Rant. He’s currently in pre-production on his first feature (and has been for a while, because filmmaking is expensive). You can catch him performing standup at odd pubs around the UK that will give him stage time. Previously, he wrote for Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop.

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