flawless, a complex combination of beauty and downright seediness

Rating: 10/10 (27 July 2006)

flawless, a complex combination of beauty and downright seediness - works because it is constrained within a coherent narrative - a modernist masterpiece
From the very beginning one gets the impression of fun and menace within this movie - the awful joke run riotously bad by Geddis regarding the sexual morais of the Chinese and the hopelessly seedy nature of the assignments that Geddis, as a private eye, usually gets, hint of the possibility that things will soon go very pear shaped.
Los Angeles is of course the star, but this time it is the hideous beauty beneath the sprawl that wins; something truly gone to seed - The Late Show (1977) meets the Big Sleep (1946).
Of course the Jack Nicolson and Faye Dunaway chemistry works brilliantly, but it is the sparing but towering performance of John Huston that steals the show - almost a cameo, he plays the Noah Cross figure at the centre of the whole sordid affair; a figure who is the grotesque freakish abomination at the heart of the plot.
Of course one could not leave out Roman Polañski, whose flawless direction, eye for detail and mood, along with a few theatrical embellishments, ensures that a good story succeeds.