"I Just Feel Depressed. My Head's Getting Bigger, Squarer, More Like A Cube."*

"What the fuck happened to you, man? Shit, your ass used to be beautiful!" -Ordell

Quinton Tarantino's Jackie Brown is one of my favorite movies. In it, [SPOILER- although if you're so fucking lame you haven't watched it I kind of think you deserve to have it ruined but...I will be lady-like in this one instance] there is a particularly heartbreaking scene between characters played by Robert DeNiro and Samuel L. Jackson, where they have a talk that they both know is going to end very badly. It does. There's a lot of blood, but it's not as much gory as it is just sad. The focus is on the end of a partnership. Louis (DeNiro) realizes too late he made a grave error in judgement. Ordell (Jackson) struggles with the fact that he has a code of ethics he has to live by in order to survive. And that code means that he has to do shitty things like shoot an old prison friend in the stomach when he's looking the other way after said partner royally fucks up a business transaction of sorts and kills one of his various mistresses in a Los Angeles mall parking lot in broad daylight.

There's no black or white emotional territory in this interaction. It's all gray, and the fact that Ordell is so disappointed in his partner is heart-wrenching. He's so tender in the way he murders Louis. It haunts me. Tarantino's screenplay & direction and Jackson's acting manage to blend seamlessly to present to the viewer that Ordell doesn't want to. He has to.

*Conan O' Brien, in the fantastic Michel Gondry video with Meg & Jack White.