A beautiful trip to the land of mystery noir

Rating: 9/10 (28 April 2003)

In Roman Polanski's Chinatown, inspector J.J. Gittes is sucked into a world of scandal and mystery, where nothing is as it seems and everything is connected. Set in 1940's L.A., Chinatown takes mystery noir and turns into into a beautiful masterpiece. Surprisingly it is compared by many to the 1997 feature L.A. Confidential, who also say that they are alike. I find this difficult to believe, because Chinatown is more of a mystery noir while L.A. Confidential is more of a thriller. The performances in Chinatown are first- rate, with immensley deep performances by Jack Nicholson and Fay Dunaway. Both were nominated for their roles, and they both deserved to win. An honorable mention is John Huston as Noah Cross, a mysterious man who has more involvement then seen. It's not easy to like Jack Nicholson's character; he is snoopy and sly, and will do whatever it takes to get information. However, the viewer can easily understand him for he is sucked into this world without warning. The script by Robert Towne won Best Original Screenplay, which it deserved very much because of the absolute brilliance and originality. There is not one excessive line in this film, or really an excessive scene. Roman Polanski too this excellent script and turned it into pure brilliance, also high notes for pushing the cast members. The photography is interesting, but there isn't much of 50's shown in this picture, it's much more involved in the storyline then the setting. The only real flaw of this film is that it gets a bit slow and boring, but it doesn't hurt it much from being the masterpiece it is. One of the top ten films of all time. 9.75/10