The relationship between Jackie Brown and Max Cherry is romantic and culminates in a farewell kiss. Throughout the film, Pam Grier and Robert Forster build a closeness that is recognised in the attention they pay each other, in the conversations they prolong and in the trust needed to work together. The ending allows them to express that attraction, even if sharing it does not lead them towards the same future. Affection and the possibility of a shared life receive different responses.
Their rapprochement begins in an unpromising situation: Max picks Jackie up after she is released from prison, as part of his work as a bail bondsman. From that encounter on, the film gives them moments to get to know each other outside the strictly professional. A drink, coffee, records and questions about age gradually give substance to the bond. When the farewell arrives, the emotion comes from those accumulated experiences: both have found someone to talk to about what they want to change and what they find hard to leave behind.
The attraction between Max and Jackie develops as they begin to choose to prolong their contact. Quentin Tarantino’s 1997 film turns accompanying another person and listening to them into decisive actions for their relationship. Each meeting makes a new disposition visible and prompts them to reconsider the image they had formed of the other.
From professional duty to personal attention
When they begin to talk, Max Cherry has a professional relationship with Jackie that might have been limited to resolving the job. However, attention shifts towards what each of them wants to say. Their company begins to have its own value. That change matters because Jackie comes to him in a vulnerable situation and needs to be able to express herself beyond the demands of Ordell and the agents.
The conversational rituals over a drink or a cigarette allow them to move from initial politeness to personal observations. Sharing a little time without demanding an immediate outcome changes the relationship. Conversation can pause on something ordinary and let interest grow through exchange, without either of them yet having to make a romantic declaration.
Jackie Brown retains her initiative in those encounters. She can decide how much to say and see what response she gets. Max’s interest allows their conversation to move at a different pace from an interrogation: here there are personal questions that do not seek a confession useful for implicating her. That freedom gives the attraction concrete support.
Getting to know each other before trusting the other person
The visit to her home broadens that exchange. The music by The Delfonics that Jackie and Max share introduces a taste that belongs to her life before the criminal plot. Sharing it allows Max’s curiosity to have a concrete object and lets Jackie take the place of the one who invites and teaches something of her own. Getting to know each other also means paying attention to what makes the other person’s company enjoyable.
The conversation about age contains a small negotiation of honesty. In the conversation about Max’s hair, he shares a personal concern with Jackie. Intimacy grows when both can talk about what troubles them. The attraction thus makes room for an insecurity that each might have preferred to hide at the start of the rapprochement.
Afterwards, Jackie explains her fear of having to start again. Max hears a concern that goes beyond the danger from Ordell. The scene allows two working lives and two ways of thinking about the time that lies ahead to be compared. Talking about the passage of time also changes the courtship: getting to know each other means finding out which habits they are willing to change and which losses they fear.
Working together on the plan adds a practical test. Jackie needs Max to agree to take part, and he must decide for himself how far he is willing to commit. The risk gives trust weight, but it also introduces an uncomfortable question about how they might use each other. Their closeness has to coexist with that imbalance: she proposes an escape and needs to involve him; he retains the ability to decide how far he wants to accompany her.
The kiss and the final decisions
Jackie announces a trip to Spain and invites Max, who declines. The proposal turns something that the relationship had kept as a possibility into a concrete decision. One thing is to recognise the value of what they have shared, and another is to commit to a different life. The respect between them includes accepting that one person’s desire does not decide the other’s future.
Pam Grier explained her reading of the farewell to Sean Fennessey in The GQ&A: Pam Grier, published on 3 October 2011. She described it as a romantic gesture from Jackie towards a man who had cared for her and who felt intimidated. She also recalled that Tarantino, after the rehearsals, gave them freedom to find the contact and emotion of the moment.
The kiss confirms the attraction. Max returns to answering the office phone. That return to routine can be read as a sign of how difficult he finds it to leave it behind, even if the film does not reduce his decision to a single explanation. The intimacy they have just shared remains alongside the separation.
The farewell continues with Jackie at the wheel and Across 110th Street. The scene leaves each of them in a different place after the kiss. Jackie’s achieved change and the romantic possibility left behind are part of the same ending, without showing what life each will lead afterwards.
In the Harvard Film Archive conversation of 8 October 2016, Grier recalled preparing her scenes by paying attention to her fellow actors’ rhythms. Speaking about Forster, she mimicked a slow, measured way of responding, very different from Keaton’s speed. That difference is useful for appreciating how a brief reply can sustain interest without turning it into a declaration.
In the encounters between Max and Jackie, staying to listen matters because the plot forces other characters to demand immediate answers. With him, hesitation can keep its space; with Ordell, the same delay can increase the danger. The viewer learns to perceive those changes in pressure. Closeness allows moments in which neither needs to impose themselves, and that possibility makes their company desirable before a shared future is spoken of. It also makes the goodbye painful: someone has become a good conversational partner and yet can still remain outside the life the other person is planning.