"To tell you the truth, I lied a little".

Rating: 9/10 (2 April 2011)

If you've seen your share of B Westerns from the Thirties and Forties, you're bound to have seen a few where water rights are being contested, while the evil town boss sends out his henchmen to buy up all the land from the starving ranchers who have no way to water their herds or grow their crops. In some respects, "Chinatown" is the ultimate B Western turned into a stylish noir film that stands as one of the premier classics coming out of the 1970's.
There's another comparison I can draw as well, that being Bogart's 1941 picture, "The Maltese Falcon". J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) operates a lot like Sam Marlowe, and isn't above putting the picture's femme fatale (Faye Dunaway as Evelyn Mulwray) in the hot seat when the facts of a case point him in that direction. I would like to have seen some snappier banter between Nicholson's character and Detective Escobar's crew, the way Bogie did with Ward Bond and Barton MacLane in 'Falcon'. John Huston directed that great era classic, but I didn't know he could pour on the subdued malice the way he did here as the head of the Cross family. That was an interesting observation he had about ugly politicians and whores looking better as they get older.
I wonder what Jack Nicholson must have thought to himself doing this picture with that bandage slapped across his face most of the time. I guess you have to be pretty confident with yourself as an actor to go with it, because as the viewer, it distracted me no end, to the point of being comical at times. When that happened, all I had to do was think back to how he earned it, and I winced all over again.