A lot of Quentin Tarantino’s characters have become iconic in pop culture, but Robert Forster’s performance as bail bondsman Max Cherry in Jackie Brown remains criminally underrated. Tarantino’s characters are what made him such a renowned writer-director. He writes characters that have a distinctive voice and humanize genre archetypes. He can write a mob hitman who’s sympathetic, he can write a sociopathic killer who’s oddly charismatic, and he can write an S.S. colonel who’s as intuitive as Sherlock Holmes. When Tarantino’s 10-movie career is over, his characters will be his most lasting legacy.

Tarantino writes fascinating characters that actors like Uma Thurman and Samuel L. Jackson can really sink their teeth into, and he’s adept at directing those actors to give three-dimensional performances in their roles. There are a ton of performances from Tarantino movies that have become legendary, from Christoph Waltz’s turn as Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds to Brad Pitt’s turn as Cliff Booth in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. But Forster’s performance in Jackie Brown is still an underappreciated gem.

Robert Forster In Jackie Brown Is The Most Underrated Acting Performance In Any Quentin Tarantino Movie

Forster Brought Plenty Of Emotional Depth To Max Cherry

After relaunching John Travolta’s career with Pulp Fiction, Tarantino became known for revitalizing the careers of fading movie stars. With his next film, Jackie Brown, he cast two Hollywood icons who had fallen by the wayside. Blaxploitation legend Pam Grier played the тιтle character, a flight attendant pitting a gangster and the feds against each other, while Medium Cool star Robert Forster played her love interest, bail bondsman Max Cherry. Although Forster received the film’s only Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, his performance still doesn’t get enough love.

Forster’s portrayal of Max, and his love story with Grier’s Jackie, is a heartwarming portrait of older people finding love later in life. Tarantino has written a lot of romances throughout his career, from the forbidden romantic tension between Vincent and Mia in Pulp Fiction to the lovers-on-the-run thrill-ride of True Romance, but Jackie Brown is the only one that doesn’t feel like a genre fantasy. Jackie and Max’s love for each other feels real, and Grier’s chemistry with Forster sells it.

Why Jackie Brown Is An Underrated Quentin Tarantino Movie In General

Jackie Brown Is Tarantino’s Most Mature Movie

The fact that Forster’s performance in Jackie Brown is underrated is indicative of a larger problem: that Jackie Brown itself remains Tarantino’s most underrated film. Jackie Brown is Tarantino’s only adaptation of another writer’s work — Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch — and being beholden to existing source material gave Tarantino’s filmmaking a restraint that can’t be seen in his other movies. Jackie Brown is Tarantino’s most mature and realistic movie; it shows that he could’ve had a career in classical Hollywood filmmaking.