Chinatown

Jake Gittes,an LA private investigator, is hired by a woman who calls herself Mrs. Mulwray. She tells him that she suspects that her husband cheated on her and that she wants some confirmation upon these suspicions. Mr. Mulwray, it seems, only cares about water and nothing else. All he does is hang around the waterways, riverbeds, and other water outlets. There is one time that Mr. Mulwray is having a fling with a young blonde and Gittes is on the scene with his camera. One photograph and a large front page headline later another woman comes into his office.

According to her, she is the real Mrs. Mulwray. The woman who hired him was just an imposter. The real Mrs. Mulwray threatens to sue for defamation and libel. Now we have a story. Jake Gittes has been embarrassed and wants to talk to Mr. Mulwray. As he learns of Mr. Mulwray's whereabouts he sees that Mr. Mulwray is indeed dead. Plot twist!

That night he "wanders" into the reservoir area once more (where he tried to meet Mr. Mulwray the first time) but is confronted by two goons, Claude Mulvihill and his short midget friend. The short midget takes a part of Jake's nose and says to get the hell away from their business. The next day Jake receives a call. It's Idra Sessions (also known as the imposter in the beginning of the movie) and she gives him some information.

Who is this woman in actuality? What happened to Mr. Mulwray? Will he be able to keep the honor of his good name?

This movie I would say entertained me for about the first hour or so. The first hour is full of action and drama and all the plot elements are all separate but they still all make the movie. Then the movie settles down. We see Mrs. Mulwray. She's a mess and she takes Jake down with her in this whole debacle. As we go further into the movie I feel like the investigation sense of this film noir is taken and the investigation takes a back seat for character development, where we learn more about Jake and Evelyn (Mrs. Mulwray). Jack Nicholson (Jake) is phenomenal like always but we don't see his character fleshed out. If you like mis en scene, this movie has a bunch of cool shots where we see things from a weird camera angle. In one scene we are in the back seat as he is backing away from an armed horseman and to see that one shot as the horse is galloping towards us raises the tension and the excitement. It was a great shot.

The parts of the movie that I guess didn't work is one of the characters. Mrs. Mulwray's father is not the nicest of guys and at first they paint him as a sophisticated guy but the thing is that they didn't lead us up with any clues that he would be the type of guy that he would be. There was no build up and no subtle clues for a nice second viewing. Monsoon Wedding did a better job setting us up for the surprise.

I guess I give this a 6/10. It got kind of boring for the last half hour.