I hate film noir and I always will......

Rating: 4/10 (6 August 2001)

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.