Jackie Brown

Tarantino's third film is arguably his most serious and studied; a soulful crime saga with Pam Grier as the flight attendant in the midst of a money-laundering scam.

Quentin Tarantino followed Pulp Fiction with this stripped-back crime saga, an adaptation of Elmore Leonard's Rum Punch that, despite being the only film of Tarantino's to be an adaptation, still feels like his most serious, personal work.

Blaxploitation legend Pam Grier is excellent as the flight attendant caught up in a money laundering racket, who has to learn fast in juggling the attentions of bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster) and violent gun-runner Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson). Perhaps surprisingly, Tarantino's homage to blaxpolitation is sweet and soulful, rather than frenetically funky, and in resurrecting the wonderful Grier from a late-career of b-movies and minor roles, he delivers the most rounded, human and engaging lead character in his entire filmography.