One of the Best of the Best

Rating: 10/10 (13 May 2019)

Noir films were more a part of the cultural mainstream during the 1930s through the 1950s than they are today. Hardboiled detective films used to flood the theaters of yesteryear as superhero films flood theaters today. Everyone from Humphrey Bogart ("The Maltese Falcon") to Jimmy Stewart ("Vertigo") to Orson Welles ("The Third Man") donned the fedora and proverbial magnifying glass. "Chinatown" might have arrived thirty years past the primetime of noir films, but it still is one of the best of the genre.
Jake himself is one of the better noir protagonists, because while he might fit some of the detective tropes, he also makes the role his own. One of the main things that make Jake interesting is the journey he takes a character. When we first meet Jake, he doesn't seem particularly content in his work; he seems to be doing it just to make ends meet. But as the film goes on, we watch as Jake's casual approach to his job falls away, and he frantically scrambles to find out what happens. Watching Jake shift from an uncaring and distant detective to a detective so personally involved in the case not only makes him a thrilling character, it makes the ending so much more intense and tragic.
Another thing I really like about this film is that nothing really feels forced as far as storyline. I've read my fair share of mystery novels and seen more than my fair share of mystery movies, and it always bugs me how many overly coincidental moments play into the detective (or protagonist) solving the mystery. Even in some of Polanski's other works, I've taken issue with the way some revelations are handled. For example, in "The Ghost Writer", there's a scene where the protagonist (played by Ewan McGregor) gets information only because he gets caught on the other side of an island during a rainstorm and he just happens to stop at a house where a character saw some vital information and was willing to relay it to the protagonist. That whole scene felt incredibly coincidental, yet the film wouldn't have worked without it. "Chinatown" doesn't really have any of those moments; instead, the script is drum-tight.
Without going into any details, just know that the last scene of this film is the scene that solidifies its greatness. The ending sells the bleakness of the themes and world in a way that feels tragic but totally unavoidable. No matter what Jake did, the film was always going to end the way that it did, and that really emphasizes the hopelessness of the world that Polanski has so carefully crafted. It might not be a happy film (this is Polanski we're talking about- he doesn't have many happy films), but it is a brilliant representation of the noir genre, and one of the most memorable detective films of all time.