Exciting, captivating, and harrowing-one of the greatest films ever made!

Rating: 10/10 (22 February 2003)

Chinatown is one of the rare films that showcases the absolute full potential of the Hollywood dream factory. Everything about this film is absolutely perfect. It's really a shame that Chinatown came out the same year as The Godfather Part II (which is my favorite movie ever) and only got an original screenplay Oscar-virtually ANY OTHER YEAR it would have easily gotten Best Picture and Director, and who knows what else.
The story alone makes this a classic thriller. Robert Towne really put together an incredible screenplay, which requires you to pay close attention to figure out everything happening but is worth every bit of the effort. As all the pieces of the puzzle come together, the film just gets more and more mesmerizing. The dialogue is incredible; I can count on one hand the number of films I've seen that were as quotable. The highlights are the exchanges between Gittes and Cross, as well as the famous scene with Gittes and Evelyn. The film remains incredibly absorbing right up until the devastating finale. Polanski had to fight Towne to put that ending on there, but for good reason. This ending left me horrified, but Chinatown just would not have been the same movie without it. Polanski directs the entire thing brilliantly-he evokes so many different emotions out of the viewers just right and leaves us with the feeling that we have just been exposed to events that should have remained hidden, if only to prevent emotional scars.
The acting is uniformly excellent, from the leads to Escobar and Yelburton to Evelyn's servants to the farmers in the San Fernando Valley, and everyone in between. That includes the director himself in a very gory cameo. I want to talk about the leads. Jack Nicholson is an actor who I used to think was very overrated. I'd primarily seen his films in the past 15 years or so, and thought he always played himself, complete with grinning and rudeness. When I saw Chinatown though, I was blown away. There is one scene where he's telling the dirty joke and seems like JACK, but other than that there is not a trace of the regular character. Gittes is a cynical, wounded private eye who at first is simply trying to make a living, then clear his name, and then finds himself in love and wanting to care and protect in spite of himself. Nicholson nails every aspect of the performance, and after watching him here I went out to see other early works of his such as Five Easy Pieces. John Houston is also exceptional, playing one of the most contemptible villains ever, and my guess as to the reason he wasn't nominated for Best Supporting Actor is simply because the Academy hated his character far too much.
However, I think Faye Dunaway deserves the most praise here. She delivers one of the best performances I've ever seen by an actress in any movie. At first Evelyn is so icy (I've heard some even call her a femme fatale, even though that label is certainly not appropriate once you watch the entire film) and we wonder what she could possibly be hiding. Then later we see that she is in great pain, but can only wonder why. I was especially moved by her when she softly told Gittes "Please believe me; I would never have hurt Hollis. He was the kindest most gentle man and you wouldn't believe what he had to go through for me." After the revelation, I found myself never having cared about a movie character more. I haven't seen Dunaway's other starring roles, but it's clear why she was one of the top actresses of the 1970s, and I'm glad she won Best Actress for Network two years after this.
I've made an effort not to spoil anything in this remarkable film. Anyone who wants to see everything a movie can be needs to experience Chinatown.