Product: The Two Jakes [VHS] (1990)
Rating: 5.0
"Chinatown" through a glass, darkly
Readers: take close note of that average customer rating above and dismiss the unfortunate choice of critical review at the top. I think in ten or twenty years this will be brought to the same high pedestal as "Chinatown". From the moment Jack takes note of Harvey's shoes, to the last inspired note of Jo Stafford, this is a work of high and detailed craftsmanship.The reason I rate this as the best sequel of all time is that the storyteller speaks with twenty years' older voice to us as his equally enriched contemporaries. He observes the nuance in human behavior we would appreciate, and he reveals the subtle qualities of light that reassert L.A.'s beauty. He also tells a more complex and engrossing story, apparently more intricate than reviewers like the one above could understand, but all the better to savor.For any of us in his generation, Jack has sent a beautiful memento of our earliest days. "Chinatown" was a perfect vintage, but "Jakes" is a perfect thirty-year-old brandy.