My favorite part in “Jackie Brown” is just after Samuel Jackson kills Robert DeNiro in the van... no, I guess that whole scene is beautiful... but yes... the best part is after. Sam J shoots DeNiro, who all you’ve seen of him is that he’s basically an incompetent befuddled asshole with a stupid unchecked temper, and you know that he got out of jail and then just sort of hung around smoking a bunch of pot all the time. And he not only missed some obvious cues that he was getting conned out of SLJs $$$, but he also shot Melanie in the mall parking lot because basically he didn’t want to hear her talking any more. So that’s all you know about him, and then Sammy kills him and as he’s getting out of the van, he says, to Bobby’s corpse, he says something like, “What the hell happened to you, man? You used to be beautiful.” And you know that he’s talking about it in a criminal sense, like probably Bobby used to be able to figure all of the angles and have good instincts and move like a tiger, and know the meaning of holding a gun, but then... what? He got caught and locked up and lost his confidence? He got old and got a gut? He smoked too much weed, drank too much booze, watched too much TV? And that’s what Sam wants to know, because Sam is still a stone cold killer, still on top of his game, still working at full capacity with his brains and his trigger finger, knowing who to shoot and when, and even though he just got conned, he KNOWS that he just got conned, and how (well... almost). And he can’t understand why anybody would ever want to lose that power. So if you’re paying attention, you watch a second movie in your own head, in an instant, and if you’re really paying attention, you’re wondering if it’s the story of your own life, and there’s a third movie. I don’t understand it when people say they don’t have time for fiction. What do they think? The New York Times will help them?
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 02:11:17 +0000
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