| “ | Shut the fuck up and sit yo' raggedy ass down!!
|
„ |
| ― Jackie Brown to Ordell Robbie |
Jackie Brown is the titular main protagonist in Quentin Tarantino's 3rd film Jackie Brown. She is a flight attendant for Cabo Air who smuggles money and drugs for Ordell Robbie from his off-shore accounts.
She was portrayed by Pam Grier.
Biography[]
After Beaumont Livingston's death at the hands of Ordell Robbie, Jackie Brown is intercepted by ATF agent Ray Nicolette and LAPD detective Mark Dargus (to whom Beaumont was informant) with Ordell's cash and a bag of cocaine. After she is sent to jail, Ordell hires Max Cherry to bail her out. The arms dealer later arrives at Jackie's apartment, but she pulls out a gun she stole from Max's glovebox. She negotiates a deal with Ordell: she will pretend to help the authorities while smuggling in $550,000 of his money. However, Jackie later plans to keep the $500,000 for herself. She recruits Max, offering him a cut. During a test run, Jackie smuggles in $10,000, with Nicolette and Dargus aware, to swap with Sheronda, Ordell's live-in girlfriend, at a shopping mall. After Jackie leaves, Max observes an unknown woman swap bags with Sheronda. He informs Jackie and she confronts Ordell, who states he used Simone Hawkins, one of his contacts, to secure his money as a backup.
On the day of the transfer, Jackie enters a dressing room in a department store to try on a suit. Though she has told Nicolette the exchange will take place in the food court, she has told Ordell she will swap bags in the dressing room. The bag contains only $40,000; Jackie leaves the rest in the dressing room for Max. She later takes $10,000 and places it on top of the bag she gives Melanie Ralston as a bonus. Jackie runs to the food court and finds Nicolette, claiming Melanie burst into the dressing room and stole the money.
Following Melanie and Louis Gara's deaths, Ordell instructs Max to tell Jackie that he will kill them if she does not return the money and that if she goes to the police, he will name her as an accessory. Max goes to Ordell's house, and tells him that Jackie, frightened, is waiting in Max's office with the money. Ordell holds Max at gunpoint as they enter his office. Jackie yells out that Ordell has a gun. Nicolette, Dargus, and Cherry's business partner Winston, who provided Max with Ordell’s location, hiding in the back, ambush him and shoot him dead. The charges against Jackie are dropped, and she plans a trip to Madrid. Max declines her invitation to join her. They kiss goodbye and he watches her drive away.
Trivia[]
- The character Jackie Brown is based on in Elmore Leonard's book Rum Punch is actually a white woman. Quentin Tarantino changed the race of the character so he could work with one of his favorite 70s exploitation film actresses: Pam Grier.
- Tarantino wanted Pam Grier to play Jackie. She previously read for the Pulp Fiction character Jody, but Tarantino did not believe audiences would find it plausible for Eric Stoltz to yell at her. Grier did not expect Tarantino to contact her after the success of Pulp Fiction. When she showed up to read for Jackie Brown, Tarantino had posters of her films in his office. She asked if he had put them up because she was coming to read for his film, and he responded that he was actually planning to take them down before her audition, to avoid making it look like he wanted to impress her.