Classic!

Rating: 9/10 (17 August 2005)

There isn't a great deal I can say in praise of this film that hasn't been said before. If you want a worthy review of this film, check out Roger Ebert or one of the other stalwart critics. They're spot on as usual about this one.
A few points of praise: all the performances (Nicholson, Dunaway, Huston), the plot (Robert Towne), the direction (Polanski at his best since Repulsion), the score (Jerry Goldsmith, no surprises there)... get the picture? One little gripe is Polanski's tinkering with the ending, which might still be wonderfully tragic, but shouldn't have taken place in Chinatown. The name was not supposed to be the actual place, but a suggestion of a dark place we've been and shouldn't go back to again for the sake of our EMOTIONAL well-being, not the physical... in this case Jake's past, in which he was a beat cop in Chinatown.
You might not know that a sequel, The Two Jakes, was made in 1990 with Nicholson (who directed it) and some of the key supporting cast. Most reviews pull it to pieces, except for a very well-considered one by Roger Ebert. Of course, it's not the classic Chinatown is, but it's a damned good movie. It's about the past, how it pervades our lives for the rest of our days, and how we assimilate it into our futures.
So there's what I think. Chinatown is one of those movies that should never be forgotten, but one of those that will probably, and sadly, not stand up to the ever-diminishing attention spans of today's audiences. Catch it while you can cope with it.