Chinatown = Two Thumbs Down

Rating: 3/10 (9 March 2006)

The film Chinatown was made in 1974 and was directed by Roman Polanksi and written by Robert Towne. This movie was supposed to portray a crime thriller pact with action and adventure. Unfortunately I did not care for this movie all that much for a couple of reasons. One being that I thought that the movie was very drawn out and quite frankly I thought it was a little long. Jack Nicholson plays the main character J.J Gittes who is a private investigator who is usually hired to see if the spouse is cheating on another. I thought that he did fine job acting but I felt as if I knew almost every curve or bend that was around the corner.
From the start of the movie you could almost tell it was going to be a Hollywood type movie. It seems like the classic movie where the chump guy falls for the hot girl and believes her little sob story, when all in all it comes back to her in the end. Evelyn Mulwray who was played by Faye Dunaway kept on giving Mr. Gittes false information or would make up another story until she had him believing her in the end. J.J. who is suppose to be a good private eye never really fully comprehends what is going on until Evelyn tells him about her daughter/sister that she has. After being given the run around one to many times Mr. Gittes goes over to the house where Evelyn was holding the child and confronts her. He gets so impatient and frustrated that he slapped Evelyn until she spit out the truth to him. We then come to find out that she was raped as a little girl by her father and have become pregnant and birthed a girl and that girl was the one upstairs in the house. Evelyn was trying to hide her from her dreaded father who wanted to have the child to himself. Out of all the movies that I've see with Jack Nicholson I would have to say that this would rank among one of the weakest thrillers to date. Though I think that it being a classic it is a must see for someone who really wants to get a background of films done in the 70's and how they broke the trend that most movies were being filmed and because of that we have the type of movies we have today.