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You Have To Secure The Bag By 50 In This Harsh Corporate Climate
After 50, ageism, competition, and health concerns become paramount. And that’s if you’re lucky.
The other night I was rewatching Jackie Brown. Quentin Tarantino’s 1997 low-key urban crime classic based on the book Rum Punch by Elmore Leonard, stars Pam Grier, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert de Niro, and Robert Forster.
After the massive success of ’94s bombastic Pulp Fiction, audiences were left slightly jilted by the quiter, subtler Brown. Less discerning audiences, anyway. Brown is a great film with nuanced performances, a smart script, and a dark, twisty plot. If Pulp is a colorful cocktail, Brown is a whiskey neat.
The film, set in 1995, might have left some viewers sour because of its unsexy themes regarding the occupational and romantic desperations of middle-age. In the story, Jackie Brown (Grier) is a lowly 43-year-old flight attendant working for a “shitty” Mexican airline, making all of $16,000 a year, plus benefits. That’s only $33,000 in today’s money. On the side, she runs cash across the border for Ordell Robbie (Jackson) a smooth-talking low-level arms dealer thug who murders problematic subordinates the way one takes out the trash. When she’s caught by police with one of Robbie’s packages, and two baggies of…
