This fan re-edit reveals the clockwork precision of Tarantino’s film-making.

A linear reconstruction of a Tarantino movie should be the filmic equivalent of explaining a joke. But James Neuman‘s re-edit of the money exchange sequence from Jackie Brown (1997) reveals the clockwork precision of Tarantino’s film-making, and presents the sequences with a new kind of tense watchability:

Speaking of timing: let’s take a moment to watch the film’s opening sequence (unchanged, in this case). This four-minute scene, and set to the glorious sounds of Bobby Womack, tells us everything about the character of Jackie (Pam Grier) we will learn on this journey with her over the next two hours: a strong, regal, desperate, determined woman, who presents a dignified air, who will run for her life, who will make it, and who will retain her gracefulness, who will, as the song goes, “do what I have to do to survive”:

Further Viewing

Among Tarantino‘s changes to Elmore Leonard‘s novel Rum Punch, from which Jackie Brown was adapted: Tarantino made the character of Jackie black. More in the 2002 making-of featurette, Jackie Brown: How It Went Down:

Another fantastic Elmore Leonard adaptation was filmed and released around the same time as Jackie Brown. Both even share one Mr Michael Keaton, which means this is a cinematic universe. Peak George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez before she became J-Lo, directed by Steven Soderbergh in what is both a proof-of-concept for his Oceans series, and masterclass in style all its own – Out of Sight (1998):