Product: The Two Jakes [VHS] (1990)
Rating: 3.0
Muddled presentation of a good follow-up to a great movie
Private eye Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) coaches a cuckolded husband (Harvey Keitel) on the proper way to confront his wife (Meg Tilly) and her lover while Jake waits next door, taping the event for future use in divorce proceedings. Events take an unexpected turn when Jake's client produces a gun and shoots his rival, thereby making Jake a possible accessory to murder. That's just for starters. There will be many twists and turns involving real estate development, natural gas, and the persistent specter of the murdered Evelyn Mulwray and her missing daughter.There is a very good movie here with complex characters and a fine conclusion, but I must count myself among those who found the script and direction somewhat muddled. When a long film presents a complicated story, it can be difficult to know which scenes were extraneous until the final credits roll, so I was left with the strong impression that the narrative should have been better focused without being exactly sure where it went astray, aside from finding many of the flashbacks to the previous film to be rather unwieldy.