The Pitch: A stewardess (Pam Grier) gets busted for smuggling arms money across the Mexican border. Instead of going to jail, she joins a sting on her gunrunner boss (Samuel L. Jackson), getting involved with some shady characters and a whole lot of cash. (Miramax/December)

The Big Picture: Acting on his jones for blaxploitation-era icon Grier, Quentin Tarantino wrote the script (based on Elmore Leonard's Rum Punch) expressly for her, trading the novel's Florida setting for California and its white heroine, Jackie Burke, for Jackie Brown. "I thought it would be Jackie Daniels," says the tough-as-nails actress. "That's what I drink." Whether Tarantino, in a welcome return to the director's chair, will give Grier a Travolta-style career resuscitation is still anybody's guess: "A white male and a black female in our business is a completely different dynamic," Grier says. But the film, which promises a killer soundtrack full of '70s soul tunes, does seem to fit that Pulp groove. "We're back to this really great dialogue again," says producer Lawrence Bender, who cites an opening scene in which Robert De Niro (playing a perennial jailbird) and Bridget Fonda (as a surfer girl) talk weaponry while watching TV. Jackson revisits Tarantino's expanding universe of dubious characters, who, says Bender, are "moral within their own world." The strong ensemble cast, which also includes Michael Keaton, overwhelmed Grier at first. "I told Quentin I wanted to work with one [actor] in each movie, to make more money -- not all of them at once!" she jokes.

Source: Premiere's Ultimate Fall Preview