The hallmarks of a Leonard novel are deadpan tone and deadly accurate dialogue. Here's the first sentence from his latest novel, "Out of Sight": "Foley had never seen a prison where you could walk right up to the fence without getting shot." A sentence like this sounds effortless, disarmingly casual, but it instantly creates the writer's world for the reader. As for his dialogue, it always sounds so right that John Travolta objected when the screenwriter of "Get Shorty" changed some of Leonard's words.
Pulp fiction. That's what novels like Leonard's used to be called. Trashy stories about crooks and low lifes printed between lurid covers. The passage of time has raised many pulp authors to the literary pantheon, names like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and more recently Jim Thompson. Leonard is just as good, but like them, he's had problems with Hollywood. Thanks to Travolta, "Get Shorty" at least sounded like Leonard, but does anybody remember the awful Burt Reynolds movie "Stick"? Ugh.
Quentin Tarantino's 1994 film "Pulp Fiction" put that term back in people's mouths (and won the top prize at Cannes and a Best Screenplay Oscar for Tarantino). He's become a cult figure and a Hollywood power on the basis of a handful of movies and screenplays. "Jackie Brown," his first adapted screenplay, reworks Leonard's 1995 novel "Rum Punch." Tarantino shifts the focus to Jackie Brown, a 44 year old black woman arrested by the feds for smuggling money into this country. Her job working as a cabin attendant for a Mexican airline makes her a useful courier for Ordell Robbie, who makes his living illegally selling guns. Ordell, played by Samuel L. Jackson, has a limited vocabulary in that he never says anything that isn't R-rated, so if "adult language" offends you, stay away from "Jackie Brown."
There's also violence, one sex scene (comic, not explicit), and drug use, mostly by Ordell's "surfer girl" Melanie, played by Bridget Fonda, whose ambition is to stay stoned and watch TV. Joining her is Ordell's old crony Louis Gara (Leonard fans may remember the two from "The Switch" in 1978) played by Robert De Niro. Michael Keaton plays the federal agent who nabs Jackie.
Her arrest puts Jackie into Leonard's favorite territory, the gray area between right and wrong. She has our sympathy the minute we see her. She's smarter than Ordell, who, she explains, "moves his lips when he reads." And she sees what kind of mess she's in: 44, dead-end job, looking at a year in jail if she's lucky, more if she isn't. Aided by a bail bondsman named Max Cherry who falls in love with her, Jackie puts together a careful game of playing the crooks against the cops.
Leonard centers the novel on Cherry. Although he can create strong female characters ("Killshot", for example), most of his crime novels are told from the point of view of a male cop or crook. By shifting the focus to Jackie, Tarantino builds up the role for his star Pam Grier, whose fame dates from "blaxploitation" films of the 70's such as "Foxy Brown." Grier creates a strong character whose vulnerability forces her to be cool, more cool than Ordell or the feds. Cherry's attraction to her helps humanize her.
Leonard's books in the last decade often turn on an unlikely pair, a man and woman who ordinarily would never get together (a federal marshal and a fugitive in "Out of Sight," for example). What they have in common is that both have lived long enough not to be fooled by labels: "cop" doesn't always means "good", "crook" doesn't always mean "bad." Like Cherry and Jackie, they see that justice is a game cops and crooks play. The only way to win is to know how and when to twist the rules.
If the world and words of "Jackie Brown" come from Leonard, the movie is filled with Tarantino touches, for example, unexpected violence edged with comedy. If you laughed at the scene in "Pulp Fiction" where Travolta revives Uma Thurman from a drug overdose, you'll think "Jackie Brown" is hysterical. Tarantino's fondness for a racial epithet many people find offensive landed him in a quarrel with Spike Lee, but you can argue that Tarantino puts it repeatedly in Ordell's mouth to show off the character's feral cunning but ultimate stupidity. "The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter," as Sam Spade put it in "Maltese Falcon."
The patter gets gaudy in "Jackie Brown," but this is one terrific movie to watch. Jackson and Grier are astonishing. De Niro turns a nothing part into several major moments. Robert Foster as Max Cherry looks exactly right as a 56 year old bail bondsman with hair transplants. With Tarantino pulling their strings, and Leonard pulling his, you'd think they were puppets. But they're characters, and you end up caring more about Jackie and Max than about the plot twists that put them together. That's what makes it a four star movie.