J.J. "Jake" Gittes

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**J.J. "Jake" Gittes** is the main protagonist of the 1972 neo-noir mystery film *Chinatown*. He's a Los Angeles private detective, as well as an ex-police officer. He's hired to investigate an adultery case, stumbles onto a labyrinthine plot of a murder involving incest and the privatization of water through government corruption and shady real estate deals that incriminate some of the city's most powerful tycoons.

He was portrayed by Jack Nicholson.

## Why He Rocks

1. Jack Nicholson is pretty much the heart of the movie as he just drives the film with his talented acting and memorable trademarks for his character.
2. Like a majority of the characters in the film, he serves as a deconstruction of a film noir trope. In Jake's case he tears apart the "tough-guy detective" trope from the 40s and 50s. Gittes is very much imagined as the tough-guy detective archetype but unlike the gunsels and low-rent tough guys those detectives fought against, Gittes has to fight state and corporate villainy and only barely understands the scheme of which he is so low and unimportant that it literally does not matter to the bad guys that he knows the truth or not, they know that he can do nothing and that he won't do anything to stop them. In the end he gets a powerful reality check and reveals that under that façade of a tough hardboiled detective is a vulnerable, lonely and embittered man. Also, he's never seen with a gun in his hands.
3. During his past as a detective in Chinatown he's stated to have done "as little as possible" due to not knowing what they were doing, and the one time he tried getting involved and tried to help a girl from getting hurt, he unintentionally caused the girl to get hurt. This is why he's so protective over Evelyn in the present and became a private eye. He decided to do less complicated work, simply identifying cheating partners, instead of getting entangled in deceptions, as he's clearly still depressed over his last failure. Except, he's forced into another deception and forced to live through another failure, and his girlfriend's death. He feels like things would have worked out if he never touched the case.
4. Despite his various questionable and harsh moments (i.e.: exposing extramarital affairs), Jake shows essential goodness by actively working. As he would constantly continue to pursue the mystery relentlessly, it becomes obvious that Jake isn't just a typical, sleazy, cynical Hollywood private eye. He has a heart and a deep need to solve the mystery and a sincere desire to help Evelyn Mulwray. Although at one point he insists that he's trying to solve it just because he's mad that his nose gets cut by a criminal, that's obviously not the case. He takes his job as a detective extremely seriously.
	* On top of that, he may tell unfunny racist jokes, smirk a lot, and look really at home in a dimly lit office, but he's never shown to actively love or relish that dirty side, like others might. It's all a façade to hide how broken down he truly is.
5. Adding to the previous point of Jake having a hidden heart of gold, he quickly smells a scandal relating to Hollis' murder and all the water being dumped, and he's too much of a stand-up guy to sit back and let the mystery of a murder, a woman pretending to be another woman, *and* a dehydrated metropolis go unsolved. Get this: He was sneaking around the reservoir, trying to unravel the mystery, before the knife incident even happened. He wants to know the truth and to help the county retain its stolen water (though he doesn't want to get sentimental about it). And he also *does* want to help Evelyn, though he also suspects her of knowing more than she's willing to say about her husband's murder, but he ultimately finds himself unable to handle the truth about Noah initially.