Let's be realistic.

From my favorite movies..

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

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 fact that 16 years has passed between the fantastic Chinatown and it's sequel means that you shouldn't expect any consistency in terms of quality, and you won't find it either.Towne delivers another old-school mystery script with questionable ethics, hidden agendas, deceitful women, and everything else you would expect, but this time he fails. The main twist of the story is pretty obvious from about 30 minutes in, but the plot itself becomes so convoluted with unnecessary characters that it's quite difficult to keep track of everyone's motives. Nicholson is pretty creative as a director, but he falls into the trap of trying too hard. There are simply too many ideas, and interesting shots thrown together, so the movie doesn't have a distinct style of it's own. I hate this phrase, but yes, sometimes less is more. Nicholson as an actor, well, isn't Jake Gittes, but himself. I know that Jake is older, he has been through a lot, he had to change, but somehow I can't feel that this is still the same character. Though a while back I was practically in love with Madeleine Stowe, not just her character is really out of place here with her silliness, but she was awful too, especially compared to Dunaway in Chinatown.The only positive here is the setting: after irrigation in the prequel, we get to learn a little about oil drilling in California, but this aspect is also weaker then it was in Chinatown, which is sad, because that pitch was supposed to be the core of planned trilogy.

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.

...of course i don't mean Jack Nicholson, he brings his A game to just about everything he does. This one was rather dull IMO. It just didn't have any pop. The story throughout just didn't have any wow moments like Chinatown did.Now for the miscasting. Harvey Keitel's tough guy persona just didn't work in this one. Richard Farnsworth was odd as a choice for the demon oil man and to round it out, If Meg Tilly wasn't miscast, then the casting agent was either sick that day, deaf or dead on blind. She's never been one to hit the Hollywood signs for popularity or bring in the crowds so for her to be in this was just a last minute choice or a bad choice.A little about this being too long. For something to carry on for 2 hrs and 37 minutes and slowly dribble out bits and pieces with bad casting and and average screenplay(watch for a few brief, has nothing to do with scenes with the PI's supposed wife. Didn't belong in the movie), I was just waiting for the end to say I actually finished it.I recommend anyone who's seen Chinatown to finish it off and watch this but if you haven't and aren't planning on seeing it, you aren't missing anything by skipping this one .BTW...is it me or could anyone else see Nicholson having a recurring character as a PI in some movies nowadays? He hasn't had a hit in a while, he could do more of these as his character in this. I could see it working.