Samuel L. Jackson isn’t just a great actor, he is also an enormously successful one. His films have grossed over $4.5 billion dollars at the box office (and that’s just when last we checked), he’s been nominated for an Oscar (only one? ridiculous), and he is a beloved embodiment of turn of the century cool.
But what are The Best Samuel L. Jackson Movies Ever? That’s what we’re here to find out. We asked CraveOnline’s critics – William Bibbiani, Witney Seibold and Brian Formo – to each come up with the one film that they think represents one of the best Samuel L. Jackson movies ever, and this week they’re split between one his most acclaimed films, and one of his most badass.
Best Samuel L. Jackson Movies List
Let us know what film you would pick as the best Samuel L. Jackson movies ever, and come back every Wednesday for an all-new, highly debatable installment of CraveOnline’s The Best Movie Ever!
Witney Seibold’s Pick: Pulp Fiction (1994)
Samuel L. Jackson, one of the most ubiquitous actors working, has dozens upon dozens of credits to his name; he seems inclined to say “yes” to just about any movie that lets him plays a playful and/or angry badass. He yells very well, using cussing like a weapon, often employing one wonderful 12-letter “m” word with which he is commonly associated. Jackson can play intense, soulful, funny, and crazy with equal aplomb. Sure, he has his duds (*cough* Star Wars *cough*), but they have never been so hated as to eclipse a mass audience’s affection for him. Jackson has somehow become known for playing the crazy, wild-eyed killers who, oddly enough, fit squarely into populist acceptance. He is, essentially, majestically cool. I would go so far as to compare him to Toshiro Mifune.
His best film, however, is also the most obvious choice. Jackson had starred in films prior to 1994, but he was truly announced and codified when Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction was released to overwhelming success and unending critical acclaim. As Jules, the trash-talking, Bible-quoting hitman, Jackson seemed to appear to the world fully formed and completely in his element. Who Jackson was, what he was capable of, and the full range of his awesome intensity were presented to us plainly and without pretense. It’s no wonder that Tarantino, an equally forthright and violently stylish filmmaker, would consistently cast him in most of his movies. Jackson has given better performances (Jackie Brown and Black Snake Moan leap to mind), and he was acting for 20 years before 1994 (he also worked with Spike Lee on several films), but Pulp Fiction was, in many ways, his clarion call as a movie star. It was here that he moved from being a good actor into being a universally beloved one.
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Brian Formo’s Pick: Pulp Fiction (1994)
Samuel L. Jackson has 161 acting credits. Roughly 43 of those occurred before appearing in Pulp Fiction—including a heartbreaking performance as a heroin addict in Jungle Fever, and some energetic roles that made their mark, despite smallness in size, in Do the Right Thing, Jurassic Park, True Romance, and Goodfellas—but like Jackson’s Jules in Pulp Fiction, everything changed for the actor when he escaped that Quentin Tarantino apartment of tasty burgers and bullets. After that epiphanous experience, Jackson has always been stamped with the same descriptor as the wallet that Jules retrieves from the closing diner robbery in Tarantino’s 90’s defining noir-quiz-show: Bad Mother-Fucker.
Now, Jackson is a great actor, and always enjoyable to see on screen. But, for me at least, he’s carried that Bad Mother-Fucker wallet in everything since; sight unseen, but intention felt. When he’s a basketball coach in Coach Carter, you know he’s a little harder than any other basketball coach; when he’s a billionaire with a speech impediment and penchant for McDonald’s in Kingsman, you know he’s got something bigger and badder up his sleeve; and when he’s the house slave in Django Unchained, you know he is taking immense umbrage to Jamie “Slow Jamz” Foxx waltzing in to Sam Jackson’s Badass Estate like he owns the joint. Just him being president in Big Game feels like a stunt because no one as capital-b “Bad” as Samuel L. Jackson could ever lead the country. He’s too cool to listen to Congressional bickering or idly watch them do backflips for backward constituents. If he’s the POTUS it’s only in a film where he has to rely on his bad-assery to survive.
This well-earned coolness all started in Pulp Fiction. He was cool when he walked down the hallway with John Travolta, discussing his foot massage techniques. He was cool when he ate Frank Whaley’s burger. And he was collected in his explosion of furious anger as he rid the room of Marsellus Wallace double-crossers. That’s the Bad Mother-Fucker we’ve come to know and love. But what we rarely get—aside from the Tarantino films—is that extra character layer for Jackson’s character that we get the next time we see Jules: removing a body from his friend’s garage. Jules is reflective, he has doubts, and he diffuses tension instead of creating it.
By the time Jackson and Travolta visit the diner that Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer are holding up, we feel the weight that is hanging over Jules. It’s the weight of being a bad ass mother-fucker all the damn time. And Jackson releases it, in a monologue of pure, aching beauty. “I’m trying real, haaaaard to be the shepherd.” Tarantino adds the wallet bit at the end of that scene, for one last audience chuckle. And almost every film that Jackson has appeared in since has used it as an unseen prop. But Jackson’s deepest soul is in Pulp Fiction—not just his best lines—he touched the face of the acting Gods. And that’s the triple truth, Ruth.
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William Bibbiani’s Pick: Shaft (2000)
I refuse to believe that I am the only person who thinks “It’s my duty to please that booty” is one of the best lines of dialogue ever written. And while it may not come from the best movie Samuel L. Jackson has ever made (that would be either Pulp Fiction, Goodfellas or Do the Right Thing), or even from his best performance (either Jackie Brown or Django Unchained), it does come from the best Samuel L. Jackson movie ever made: Shaft.
When we think of Samuel L. Jackson’s legacy on film, we think of badasses. We think of his authoritative presence and his disarming delivery. We think of power. It is as if the role of John Shaft was originally made for Samuel L. Jackson, but a little too soon. John Singleton’s reboot of Shaft is all swagger, letting Jackson do what he does best as a cop who moves outside the law when a rich and racist murderer (Christian Bale) teams up with a charismatic drug lord (Jeffrey Wright) to mess up his city.
The cast is great, the action is slick and the cheese is just ripe enough. When Samuel L. Jackson turns in his badge by flinging it across the room, where it gets stuck in a wall like a shuriken, we believe it. Hell, we believe that Jackson probably improvised that scene on the day. It’s a heroic movie, over the top and righteous, and Jackson nails it in every scene with sex appeal and macho energy.
When I think of Samuel L. Jackson – and I do think of him, a lot – I think of Shaft. It’s the role that typifies everything I love about his performances, and it’s one hell of a fun movie to boot.
Don’t forget to let us know what you consider to be the best Samuel L. Jackson movies ever in the comment section below!
