Overrated Mystery

Rating: Null/10 (2 November 2002)

I had heard so much about this movie from word of mouth that it was one of the best films ever created and possibly the best film noir ever. I had extremely high expectations for this movie, and when it was over I considered it a piece of trash.
The story is about city curruption and making money by taking over the water for the growing city of Los Angeles in 1930. It doesn't even sound interesting. Jack Nicholson is great as his role and it's fun to watch him in any movie, but that didn't make up for the screenplay. The biggest shocker in the movie was that Faye Dunaway's daughter was her sister as well, and her father, the man who was racketeering the water was the father. I could absoluetely care less, the child could have been anyone's and still had a zero effect. Nicholson is repedeatly chased by his old partner who secretly wants to arrest him because he thinks he murdered Faye Dunaway's wife, who was a city worker in charge of water, although Nicholson had absoluetely no motive, because he didn't know Dunaway before he took the case. The ending is horrible as well, it doesn't really matter.

If you want to see a good movie made in 1974 see Godfather Part II, it made Chinatown look like a pile of sh*t. Very overrated movie, doesn't deserve to be anywhere near it's place (#19) on AFI's top films of all time.