After more than two decades, Jackie Brown remains the most underappreciated movie in Quentin Tarantino’s impressive filmography. Adapting previous source material for the first and only time in his career gave Tarantino a sense of restraint and maturity that can’t be found in his more genre-driven movies.
In the ‘90s, Jackie Brown gave career comebacks to both Pam Grier and Robert Forster and bolstered the careers of Samuel L. Jackson, Bridget Fonda, and Robert De Niro. If the movie was made today, it might star such contemporary icons as Viola Davis and Keanu Reeves.
Viola Davis As Jackie Brown
Pam Grier earned a much-deserved career revival after playing the titular role in Jackie Brown. If the movie was made today, the role could be filled by the legendary Viola Davis, notable for being the youngest actor to ever receive the Triple Crown of Acting.
Davis’ fierce performances in the crime thriller Widows and the comic book actioner The Suicide Squad prove she could bring the same sense of empowerment that Grier brought to Jackie in 1997.
Keanu Reeves As Max Cherry
Grier wasn’t the only fading star whose career was deservingly revitalized by Jackie Brown. Her co-star Robert Forster was also met with a career comeback after the film’s release. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor – the movie’s only Oscar nod – for his turn as bail bondsman Max Cherry.
Max is the movie’s moral compass who brings a sweet, wholesome presence to each of his scenes, especially alongside Jackie. The audience needs to root for him. Today, this part could be played spectacularly by Keanu Reeves, whose career was given a similar comeback by 2014’s John Wick.
Bradley Cooper As Louis Gara
Robert De Niro’s turn in Jackie Brown as Louis Gara, Ordell’s softly spoken partner-in-crime, is an uncharacteristically understated performance by the actor. This role needs a confident enough performer to gladly relinquish the majority of the spotlight to the actor playing Ordell.
Bradley Cooper would be a great choice. He’s a world-famous movie star, but has challenged his on-screen image with similarly grumpy, downplayed roles like Jack in A Star is Born. Plus, he played De Niro’s son in Silver Linings Playbook.
Donald Glover As Beaumont Livingston
Beaumont Livingston is a small but crucial role in Jackie Brown. His early scenes play a significant part in rounding out Ordell Robbie’s characterization. In the original movie, the part was played by beloved comedian Chris Tucker, whose star was on the rise at the time due to his standup performances on Def Comedy Jam.
The role of Beaumont needs a funny, lovable, familiar actor that the audience will automatically root for to sell Ordell’s coldness when he shoots him in the trunk of his car. With his own standup, not to mention his music career and both film and TV roles, Donald Glover has amassed a similarly adoring fan base.
Dwayne Johnson As ATF Agent Ray Nicolette
With his huge roster of recurring characters, Elmore Leonard created a shared fictional universe on the page long before Marvel Studios did the same thing on the big screen. A year after playing ATF Agent Ray Nicolette in Jackie Brown, Michael Keaton reprised the role in a different Leonard adaptation, Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight.
In Tarantino’s Jackie Brown, Keaton and his stature instantly connected the audience to Ray. If this role needs a likable A-lister to represent the moral side of the law, Dwayne Johnson would be a perfect choice today.
Mark Ruffalo As LAPD Detective Mark Dargus
LAPD Detective Mark Dargus is the cop working the Ordell case alongside Nicolette. It’s a minor role, but could be memorable in the right hands. Regular Tarantino collaborator Michael Bowen shared great chemistry with Keaton in the 1997 movie.
This role could easily be filled by Mark Ruffalo, who played the sensitive partner to Leonardo DiCaprio’s brooding, hard-boiled lawman in Martin Scorsese’s psychological horror noir Shutter Island.
Jennifer Lawrence As Melanie Ralston
Melanie Ralston is the laidback femme fatale of Jackie Brown. She’s Ordell’s girlfriend and drives a wedge between Ordell and his partner Louis when she has an affair with the latter. Bridget Fonda played the role brilliantly in 1997. Today, the role could be played by revered A-lister Jennifer Lawrence.
This part requires an actor who can handle deadpan comic line deliveries like, “Wanna f***?” Lawrence nailed lines like this in David O. Russell’s darkly comedic crime saga American Hustle and exemplified her chemistry with Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook and the far less acclaimed Serena.
Jamie Foxx As Ordell Robbie
After the bombastic monologues of Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction, Samuel L. Jackson took a more cerebral, understated approach to the role of cold-hearted gun runner Ordell Robbie in Tarantino’s next directorial venture, Jackie Brown.
This role requires a smooth, charming actor like Jackson. There’s no replacing Jackson in a Tarantino movie, but if anybody could do it, it would be Jamie Foxx. Foxx did wonders with Tarantino’s snappy dialogue in Django Unchained. He’s shown off both impressive comedic abilities owing to his career in standup comedy and nuanced dramatic abilities that deservingly earned him an Oscar for his performance as Ray Charles.