Chinatown

Chinatown_360P

Chinatown

And I don't mean that in a good way. Perhaps the most highly acclaimed feature of CHINATOWN is its script, which surprises me because of all the totally implausible elements written therein. Incredulity abounds. For one thing, I found the romance between the two leads to be unconvincing at best. Worse still was director Roman Polanski's rewrite of scenarist Robert Towne's originally happy, originally good ending. (Spoiler coming) Maybe it's just me, but I have a serious problem with the way this movie ends. The emotionally distraught Evelyn Mulwray, her life and mental health in ruins because of her father, is pointing a gun at this heartless monster and only succeeds in shooting a hole through the sleeve of his jacket. Oh, come ON. She got herself killed and all she had to show for it was a ruined jacket? Please! Plus, the fact that our hero keeps screwing up and repeats the past just defeats his own effort to help Evelyn. I'm sorry, I just don't like it. I think it's stupid. Granted, it's well-done overall, but there is just too much material here that stretches the limits of plausibility. The ending, which is supposed to be a very strong point in a film, is far too poorly done. Depressing does not make a movie a masterpiece, nor does its being a "classic."

My goodness. What an awful ending. It was as if they got too deep into all their twists and turns that, instead of attempting to untie the knots and resolve the plot, they just decided to end it and be done with it as abruptly as possible. It also felt like it was a sequel to another movie that actually had something to do with or at least used the subject of Chinatown for more than a couple ominous and vague one-liners. It honestly felt like this was Chinatown 2 and I missed the far superior, more exciting Chinatown 1. It was as if the writers knew they liked the line "Forget it, Jake. That's Chinatown" but were so eager to end the movie with it that didn't bother to explain to the audience the significance of the line. It was like a callback that didn't have an initial call. A comparable example is the line TIA (This Is Africa) in Blood Diamond. It's used early on and you get a sense of its many different meanings and it's supposed familiarity amongst Africans and then the line is called back in a very moving way at the end. That's what the Chinatown line at the end should have been, but wasn't. I am just in awe as to the lengths people in the film community will go to to fall in line with the status quo on things like this. I cannot imagine anyone has ever seen Chinatown and been moved or enthralled to the point of wanting to watch it again. It seems to me that, much like the contemporary art community, film critics put on kid gloves when it comes to the so-called noir genre and are absolutely ready and willing to write off any lack of depth, lack of character development, and terrible endings as insightful and artistic noir touches. Why even name the movie Chinatown if there are only going to be 4 lines in the whole movie having to do with Chinatown? So many roads to nowhere in that movie. And then in the end, the whole movie is a road to nowhere. Chinatown could be summed up as: a private detective spends two hours unfurling an intricate web of conspiracy and corruption and then it just ends.

Yes this is meant to be one of the best Jack Nicholson's movie but I think I'm probably the only one in the world that doesn't approve of the movie. I didn't seem to see enough action going around and I think Jack Nicholson playing a good guy doesn't suit him. He's mostly better off playing crazy funny characters or a evil beast. I really like him a lot as an actor but I think this is one of the worst in my personal opinion that he has ever done in his film career! I also thought the movie title was a really wrong idea to advertise since it makes you think that a lot of things could happen in this film but it honestly didn't! It disappoints me, I honestly felt I wasted 40 minutes of my life watching absolutely no live happening. I didn't think this movie deserved an Oscar or be Top Rated. It should've been redone again, it was ridiculous!

Film Noir has to be the most overrated style of film being made. 'The Maltese Falcon', 'L.A. Confidential', and now 'Chinatown' are film noir films I have seen that are highly overrated pieces of s**t. Someone has to say how crappy this style of film is. But perhaps I am the only one using my brain when I watch these over complicated, yet extremely simple, and most of the time non-existent and forgotten about plots. First of all, the plot twists. There are too many to count in every one of these. She could be a daughter, then a lover, then a wife, then a man. It doesn't matter, apparently all of you fools will buy into anything they tell you and call it a masterpiece. You may as well watch 'Days of our Lives'. I bet they have great plot twists for all of you to sink your teeth into. There's sure to be double crosses. And as long as there are ten or eleven of those, contrived as they all are, you seem to love it. Now 'Chinatown' is no better than any of those. Jack Nicholson was a million times better in 'One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest', and that had a coherent script. So I guess thats out. Plus that had characters that you could have sympathy for, where as in film noir, this film is no exception to the rule, all of the characters are just a tool for the plot twists. They don't have personalities or souls, they just have surprises, all of which are surprises because they come out of nowhere and don't cohere with the story they initially started telling. And continuity, can I get a little of that, please. By the end of the movie, the main story element didn't even matter. All of the plans to move water out of L.A. are forgotten about, and then some contrived soap opera story line takes center stage. I will, however, admit that I did enjoy the scene when Dunaway tell Nicholson her big secret. It was just so damn contrived and out of nowhere that I found myself laughing a little and with a small smile on my face. All though, that was the only brief amount of enjoyment I got out of it, because the rest was just so slow. And its built up like we are supposed to be exposed to this great finale, but alas, we are not. But it was all silly, contrived, out of the blue, and a great plot twist that makes no sense, so I'm sure all of you were breathless when it was all said and done. And I have news for those of you who are so impressed at how good the atmosphere in this film is. Guess what? This isn't the only film thats been shot half decently and has atmosphere, all though not much of one. A lot of films have a great atmosphere. 'The Godfather' has a great atmosphere. 'Das Boot' has a great atmosphere. But these also have better direction, better stories, and better characters that we can care about. Am I really asking for too much in wanting that. Those two are great films. This is really more of an attack on the genre on the whole, but this movie is no better than any other ones. Nicholson was fine, but thats about it. I'll take a movie with characters I care about from now on, and maybe a cohesive plot and story. Thats all I ask, and I don't think thats too much.

The premise of the film was interesting, with the revelation that the woman who hired the detective to spy on her errant husband is not, in fact, the wife. The plot then twists around the murder victim's connection to the water company and the local farmers' plight during the drought. So far, so good; the acting is great and the two leads are believable in their respective roles. There are a few contenders for the murder suspect, although the ultimate perpetrator is fairly easily identified as the likeliest killer quite early on. Unfortunately, from about halfway through, the plot begins to drag quite dreadfully, the two leads form an unlikely and frankly unbelievable union, and the ending is both unsatisfactory and highly implausible. A promising start, but this film left me sorely disappointed.

*NO SPOILER YET* In case you're wondering why the incredibly high ratings, bear in mind this is a Polanski (all the cinema lovers, "intellectuals" and critics' favorite) starring now classic Jack Nicholson in a typical film noir that takes itself so very seriously it's almost telling you you have to love it or else you're not a true cinema purist. To be honest, Nicholson as the other actors put in a good performance. Dunaway is alright but not nearly brilliant, but anyways the point is even incredibly talented actors couldn't make mediocrity into greatness. The script is fine if you're a fanatic of crime films, but if you just so happen not to be particularly this is the slowest 2hrs10min you've seen in a long time. In a long time. The pacing is S-L-O-W, you couldn't quite call this piece exactly "stimulating". The very plot is completely ordinary - big powerful bad guy covers up his horrible crimes and wants more money more power, complicated story about L.A.'s water and who owns it (wow no fascinating) - and has no edge to it whatsoever for the genre. What is considered "superb structure" can just as easily feel like a ton of events that pile up and further sinks the film into a delirium of enduring boredom where instead of being uneventful, it is full of stuff happening, but all of which are dull and typical. What's more, there's nothing else about the film that helps lift the bland quality of the whole: dialog has no particular wit and also subscribes to the typical formula, the humor is corny, there's no real moral or actual greater point, the emotional dimension is fake and cold, the cinematography is flat and linear, and there isn't even that big old ending at the end that could've perhaps given legitimacy to the darn thing. *SPOILER* - the Dunaway mother/sister thing is ridiculous and unnecessary and brings no strength to the plot, the fact she dies in the end right in front of that poor traumatized kid is senseless and also with no worth, how it's strongly implied the grandfather wants to sexually abuse her too and grabs her and takes her away is just insanely unnecessary and anti-climactic. And the clues towards the end are technically ridiculous: so of all places he drowns the guy in his pool in his backyard (conveniently the only place with salt water in the whole entire perimeter), of course drops his glasses in there and in order to read that paper at the end he pulls out and wears the exact same pair... Lots of flaws there. You can like it and all, but the flaws are certainly there.

"Chinatown" is so good, it's scary. Jack Nicholson is Jake Gittes, the iconic private eye hired to spy on the husband of a woman who suspects he is having an affair. What Jake soon uncovers is a vast conspiracy involving local tycoons and water - heading towards a great conclusion with a classic surprise ending. "Chinatown" might not be the best film noir ever made but it is certainly one of the best. Like "Indiana Jones" it is a loving homage to its source - in this case movies of the 1930s, 40s and 50s such as "The Maltese Falcon" (most obviously!) and lesser-known film noirs such as "D.O.A." (which no one else I've seen so far has mentioned in comparison to this, but it does have its similarities). Nicholson is absolutely superb in his role, playing Jake with all the touch panache of an instant classic anti-hero. This was certainly a movie of the 1970s, with its anti-hero being the guy we come to root for. Robert Towne is a genius and I may seem to be giving "Chinatown" loads of fanboy praise but I can honestly say that I'm not obsessed with it in any way, in fact I've only seen it a few times. But it's just a really, really great movie that's perfect in just about every way - direction, acting, screen writing, cinematography, editing, sound...the list is endless. Polanski deserves as much praise as Towne I suppose, because his direction is flawless and very noir-ish. (If that's a suitable description.) Overall, this is a classic - for good reason. After seeing this and "L.A. Confidential" within a few days I can say with confidence that "Chinatown" is much better, and will probably be more fondly remembered years from now.

Spoilers herein. Polanski is worth watching no matter what he does. Sometimes, the film is relatively free of context, like the nearly perfect `Ninth Gate.' But watching those take work because you have to cocreate the world. Sometimes the film is set in the context of a genre where the metanarrative is about how it sets within the genre. `Rosemary's Baby' was great because it played with everything that came before, adding great portions of architectural evil and fey vulnerability. Noir revolutionized film. The detective was our representative in the story, unravelling the order of the world. Noir turned that on its head, directly referencing what came before. The noir detective was still our avatar but was swept up in the world he was trying to understand. Everything happens TO him, not around him. Now Polanski does a Welles and Nicholson does a Brando. Both are techniques of self-commentary at the same time as commenting on the genre. Both are both IN the films and OF film, but until `Chinatown' they had never been attempted at the same time. This film changed the world. Huston was along for the ride. Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 4: Worth watching.