Jackie Brown opeing with Beaumont getting busted would be AWFUL in my opinion. This is Jackie Brown’s story, not a peripheral character. It isn’t the same.
If you watched the 70s blaxpliotation/kung fu films, what do they show in the opening credit sequences underneath the cheesy yellow titles? It’s always the main character “arriving” into the movie. The camera is usually focused on them because they had no budgets for elaborate location photograpy. QT got the spirit of those movies just right. And it still serves the same purpose – it grabs your attention.
I love the look of Jackie Brown’s opening too. The blues of the wall and Jackie Brown’s suit becomes her trademark, and it serves as a great bookend to the last shot of the movie, which once again focuses on Jackie Brown’s face. But this time, she is a changed woman singing the same song. It’s satisfying.
If you showed a cheap scene with Beaumont in the beginning just for laughs, it undermines the strength of Jackie Brown’s story. What I love about Tarantino is that not only are his characters cool and funny, but they have some humanity in them, even in the criminals.
