Review of Jackie Brown

Video

Jackie Brown is presented in a 1.85:1 widescreen aspect ratio,and the transfer qualtiy is good, as you can expect from a recent film. There are several dark sequences during the film and the DVD image quality did not look overly dark, so no upping the brightness was required, as would be necessary on other DVD releases.

Audio

I was surprised to find that although the box states a 5.1 soundtrack, my DVD player reported a 5.0 soundtrack. However my subwoofer was certainly active enough so maybe this was just a glitch. The film has lots of great loud music tracks that made good use of the rear channels. Dialogue is never drowned out by the music, and louder tracks usually do not have dialogue anyway. Many tracks had me trying to remember the artist, or on which old vinyl album in the loft I could find it on.

Features

As seems to be typical with all Buena Vista Region 2 titles so far, this DVD contains no extras whatsoever. Although the box tries to proudly state its "Special Features" which are simply Interactive Menus and Scene Access, these are part of the DVD standard and therefore by definition, cannot be called "Extras" - wake up BV! The menus are totally static and are about as basic as they can be.

Conclusion

Unfortunately this DVD is one of Buena Vista`s notorious Region 2 `flippers` (along with The Rock and Air Force One) with half the film on each side. I really get annoyed when I see that irritating cartoon `change sides` logo halfway through the film, when you consider there is absolutely no reason for it. However they have tried to position it during a quiet part of the action. Here`s hoping the Armageddon exchange fiasco for the non flipper version has put the lid on all new flippers once and for all.

I have never really understood the appeal of Tarantino movies (Pulp Fiction? Er, um, hmm...) however Jackie Brown seemed to change that for me. When i saw the film for the first time I had no prior knowledge of what the strory was, and I really enjoyed it. The second viewing was better than the first (as I knew when to crank up the Dolby Digital sound for the better music tracks!).

Tarantino has made good use of long uninterrupted one take sequences (noteably Samuel L Jackson and Chris Tucker`s early scene at the open boot of Jackson`s car), and his use of the music played on each different character`s car stereo to develop that character for the audience was noteable too.

The plot twists and turns and although you can really guess who gets the cash at the end, it makes for an enjoyable ride along the way.