Jackie Brown

Tarantino adapted Elmore Leonard’s novel Rum Punch, and Leonard called the result the best of the screen adaptations made from his books. He moved the story from the novel’s Florida to the South Bay of Los Angeles, where he grew up, and turned the white Jackie Burke into the Black Jackie Brown so Pam Grier could take the part. Know where the running time goes: the plot turns on a bag swap staged inside the Del Amo mall in Torrance, replayed from one character’s vantage point after another. The length comes from repetition and long talk, not action. One whole layer is addressed to Grier. The heroine’s name salutes Foxy Brown, the credit lettering copies that film’s poster, part of the score is lifted from Roy Ayers’s cues for Coffy, and the opening sequence takes after The Graduate. Recognise none of it and the story still works, but half the picture is speaking to somebody else. Robert Forster took a supporting actor Oscar nomination and Samuel L. Jackson the Silver Bear in Berlin. The racial slur is spoken 38 times, which Spike Lee objected to publicly. A good fit if you would rather watch Jackie count her remaining years and her money than a heist come together. Not for a viewer pushed out by how often that slur lands.