Touches You

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

An Exercise In Nonsense

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Not much of a sequel to CHINATOWN. Same writer--Robert Towne. But what's missing?--Well first of all, a plot! And a mystery! And some kind of revelation. It's a real mush-mash, looking like no one was really in charge of the movie. It's troubled production history--with personnel changes, etc. might have something to do with that. The movie--as a story or drama--just kind of stumbles along. With no real momentum or any recognizable tone or style.(Like the slapstick explosion early in the film--what was that?--an homage to Charlie Chaplin??)Of course, what's REALLY missing from this film--the TWO JAKES--is Roman Polanski.He knew what he was doing in CHINATOWN and told an intriguing and relevant story, with many memorable scenes that still stay with me years and years later. What stays with me from the TWO JAKES is just a sad feeling of disappointment. Nothing much else. A waste!

Jack Nicholson deserves a lion's share of the credit for bringing the belated sequel to Roman Polanski's 'Chinatown' to the big screen, putting heroic effort into a project that never had much hope of matching the original. Comparison is of course always the cheapest form of criticism, but it's hard not to notice the holes in a cast substituting Harvey Keitel and Meg Tilly (an unconvincing femme fatale) for John Huston and Faye Dunaway, and Nicholson himself proves to be an only adequate director (under duress, to be sure).Robert Towne's incredibly convoluted plot, involving oil swindles and real estate grabs in post-war Los Angeles, is only a shadow of his earlier, Oscar winning effort, with all the hard-boiled gumshoe narration added strictly for mood when it should have been used for clarification (viewers will sympathize with Jake Gittes when he's told, "you may think you know what's going on around here, but you don't.") Cameo roles (like oil magnate Richard Farnsworth) should have been major characters; some of the major characters (nymphomaniac widow Madeleine Stowe) should have been walk-ons; and the essential film noir villain (the other Jake, played by Keitel) ends up as a tragic hero.The timing of the production was likewise all wrong, arriving after a decade of dumbed-down FX spectacles had made any notion of ambivalence all but extinct in a Hollywood drama. Perhaps the kindest thing to be said about the film is that it reinforces the classic status of the original.

The opening twenty minutes are fine, but the movie slowly, ever so slowly starts rolling downhill from there. At about the one hour mark, I was having a tough time paying attention. The problem is perhaps that you don't really care all that much about the characters. A few of the contrived "cool" scenes, like the "hand grenade" or the "blow up" or the "down on your knees" scenes are momentarily interesting, but they're really kind of "in your face" pointless.It is my belief that when you have all actors acting well in a movie it is to the director's credit. In this case, everybody is acting mediocre, including Nicholson, which points towards the sad fact that Nicholson, a great actor, is only a mediocre director. When you have Harvey Keitel, Jack Nicholson and Meg Tilly in a movie and you can't get a great performance from any of them, it is time to go back to film school.The really sad thing is that if we didn't have terrible district attorneys and judges in California who are more interested in being famous than following the legal system, a truly great director, Roman Polanski would have probably given us a great movie. Instead we have a movie that is repetitious, meandering and dull.The costumes and set design are quite good and occasionally striking. However that should be the icing on the cake of a good story. In this case, we're just getting the icing on the pop-tart.You might let Robert Town know that I am available to direct the third part of the trilogy. I am confident it would be better than the second, although not nearly as good as the first.

OK, this isn't Chinatown, but it still stars Jack Nicholson, and he is still the most interesting private eye I know.The characters supporting him were also interesting. Harvey Keitel (Bugsy, From Dusk Till Dawn, Bad Lieutenant), Meg Tilly (Agnes of God, Psycho II), Madeleine Stowe (The General's Daughter, Twelve Monkeys), Eli Wallach (Baby Doll), David Keith (An Officer and a Gentleman), and Rubén Blades (Once Upon a Time in Mexico).Just like the first film, the obvious is not the story. As Jake keeps digging, he finds what is really going on.Good period piece with some fine acting and a super selection of songs to accompany the action.