Having written and directed Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction as his first two features, Quentin Tarantino’s next move came facing huge pressure and even greater scrutiny. In typically subversive fashion, then, the filmmaker opted to helm his first (and so far only) adaptation of a pre-existing work by bringing Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch to the screen as Jackie Brown.
However, it would be fair to say the reception at the time was nowhere near as enthusiastic as it had been for Tarantino’s previous pair of instant classics. Jackie Brown drew a decent $74 million at the box office on a $12 million budget, was well-received by critics without being unanimously adored, and was almost completely shut out of the awards season conversation besides an Academy Award nod for Robert Forster, along with Golden Globe nominations for Pam Grier and Samuel L. Jackson.
These days, though, there’s a lot of fans willing to die on the hill that if Jackie Brown isn’t secretly Tarantino’s best movie, then it’s definitely his most underappreciated and unsung. It might not have captured the zeitgeist in quite the same fashion as his bigger, more quotable, or more commercially successful efforts, but that hasn’t stopped it from doing a turn on Netflix this week.
As per FlixPatrol, Jackie Brown has been seductively slinking up the platform’s most-watched charts all week, and it could yet continue to rise through the ranks as we head into the long holiday weekend, where a breezy crime caper packed with star power and even more twists makes for ideal lazy afternoon or after dinner viewing.
Published: Jul 1, 2022 02:59 am