Jackie Brown
Lionsgate
Video: 2160p/Dolby Vision
Audio: English 5.1 DTS-HD MA
Subtitles: English SDH
Buy it from DiabolikDVD

by Billy Russell, Staff Writer

The Movie: Excellent

In 1997, three years after Pulp Fiction had rewritten the rules of independent filmmaking, the world anxiously awaited Quentin Tarantino’s follow-up feature. What did he have in store for us? Reservoir Dogs, his freshman feature, was a gangster picture told all out of order, about a jewel heist gone wrong. Pulp Fiction, which won him numerous prestigious awards (including an Oscar), went back to the well of gangster flicks, but with a Godard spin on it–this wasn’t Goodfellas, these gangsters debated theology in diners.

And so, Jackie Brown followed, based on the novel Rum Punch by Elmore Leonard. A quiet drama about a middle-aged Black woman named Jackie (Pam Grier, in the performance of a lifetime) who sees her life about to crumble, again, upon just picking up the pieces after starting over before. She can’t afford to do time in prison, after getting caught smuggling money for gun dealer Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson). She’ll lose her flight attendant job and she has nothing else.

She decides to game the system in her favor. The cops want Ordell, Ordell wants a big score of money coming in. Jackie will give the cops what they want, in exchange for her immunity, while she makes Ordell think she’s using them. She wants what everyone else in this story wants: The money. Enough money to start over, afresh, and be a new person.

Jackie Brown was released to mostly positive, if unenthusiastic, reviews. Box office was fine. Audience reaction was decent. After the wild, rampaging success that was Pulp Fiction, this was seen as a failure, a misstep. For my money, Jackie Brown is when Quentin Tarantino solidified himself as a real-deal director, a filmmaker with a singular voice and style. Everything else he’d made up to that point was very cool, very well-done. Masterful, even. But Jackie Brown was a slower, thoughtful exercise on aging, feeling out of place, and the limited amount of onscreen violence in the film was just as shocking as anything he’d ever done, because it had such lasting consequences.

The years have been kind to Jackie Brown and a lot of people hail it as their favorite Tarantino film. I’m not sure that it’s my favorite, but I do have a very strong, nostalgic connection to it. It was one of the first DVDs I ever bought, and I owned the same disc since high school. It was also one of the first movies I saw, when I was very young, whose greatness I recognized right away. The story sucked me in, swallowed me whole, and I was lost in it, navigating a twisted story with such human characters. The entire cast is stacked, but Pam Grier and Robert Forster have such a palpable chemistry, it’s hard not to fall in love right along with them.

Jackie Brown is exciting, profane and violent–all the things you could hope for in a Quentin Tarantino film. It’s also surprisingly human and allows its characters to be vulnerable and afraid. Not just of violence awaiting them, but of life itself. It’s a masterpiece. 1997 was a great year for Los Angeles movies and Jackie Brown feels right at home with Boogie Nights and L.A. Confidential.

The Packaging: Good

Lionsgate has released Jackie Brown on 4K UHD Blu-ray in a two-disc set containing a 4K Blu-ray for the main feature and a regular Blu-ray disc for an HD version of the film, along with all special features. New cover artwork has been commissioned for this release and it’s gorgeous, a 70s inspired image of Pam Grier as Jackie, holding the case of money slung over her shoulder and a snub-nosed revolver, in front of a setting sun.

The Video: Excellent

Jackie Brown was released on 4K UHD at the same time as Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. The Kill Bill films have been at the center of some debate because no new transfer was commissioned for their release, they’re an upscaled version of the 2K scan that has already existed since before its release on Blu-ray ages and ages ago. I won’t bring up that debate, but I think the Kill Bill movies look good on 4K, and there is a clear improvement from their previous Blu-ray release and it’s a shame they don’t look as great as they could.

Jackie Brown, on the other hand, is a brand-new 4K scan of the film’s original camera negative and color was graded in Dolby Vision HDR. You’re not going to find a person alive who’s going to argue the end-result with you: Jackie Brown looks absolutely stunning in this release. Colors are deep and beautifully realized, shadows in nighttime sequences are pitch-black, inky and true black, and details are absolutely razor sharp. Close-ups of characters talking in dialogue sequences look damn near lifelike. This isn’t just the best Jackie Brown has ever looked on home video, I just can’t imagine films, in general, looking much better than this. Guillermo Navarro, cinematographer on Jackie Brown, is one of the greats and this release really showcases his work and the intricate use of lighting and shadows he utilizes.

The Audio: Excellent

Like I said in my review of the film itself, I owned Jackie Brown on DVD for decades and the audio mix on its 4K release appears to be the overall same, just presented in a lossless format, encoded in DTS-HD Master Audio. It very much appears to be an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” school of audio mastering and I’m in favor of it. Jackie Brown seems an odd case for it, but this is a film with an excellent sound mix. If you’re watching the film using your TV speakers or a two/three-channel soundbar, dialogue is crystal clear and always favored. This being a Tarantino film, it’s going to be a talky flick, so you want to make sure you can hear the characters speaking, as they devise plans to stab their partners in the back or abscond with large sums of money. The soundstage gets a lot of needle-drops through classic R&B hits, which are appropriately loud without being overly loud. Jackie Brown has an amazing soundtrack and you want it to bump.

For folks with a surround sound system, it’s going to get a workout here. Surround sound activity is at a nearly constant level–rear speakers constantly chatting with background ambient noise like airplanes taking off, sirens, the buzz of a crowded mall. When the action hits, you can hear the echoes of gunshots spill over into the rear of the soundstage. Jackie Brown has a very immersive sound design and this release does well by it.

Special Features: Average

There aren’t any new features here. There’s a retrospective roundtable discussion that graced a previous release of Pulp Fiction. While it would’ve been nice to have a new documentary, audio commentary or interviews to discuss the film’s lasting legacy, it’s quite loaded with legacy features from prior releases.

Breaking Down Jackie Brown - Roundtable Discussion
Jackie Brown: How it Went Down - Documentary
A Look Back at Jackie Brown - Interview with Quentin Tarantino
"Chicks With Guns" Video
Deleted and Alternate Scenes
Siskel and Ebert "At the Movies"
Jackie Brown on MTV
Marketing Gallery
Still Galleries
Trivia Track

In Summary: Must Own!

Jackie Brown is a must-own release for physical media collectors and film fans alike. The film itself is terrific, but the new 4K transfer, graded in Dolby Vision HDR, is incredible, and it alone would justify the decision to upgrade your existing purchase, or buy for a first time. The same great 5.1 mix is ported over to this release, given a lossless presentation, encoded in DTS-HD MA. And while there aren’t any new features, it boasts an amazing array of legacy features from previous releases. This is the release of Jackie Brown that we’ve all been waiting for.

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