Chinatown

Chinatown (1974)


Director: Roman Polanski
Writer: Robert Towne
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway

Synopsis
Private investigator-type-guy gets asked to look at this woman's husband (the Chief Engineer of LA County) who is accused of cheating.  This was back when water was a real problem in the LA area, and there are all sorts of political hijinks and intrigue going on.  People are in cahoots with each other.  People try to kill each other (some people die) and people run away.  Jack Nicholson is vindicated.  (spoiler alert!) The end.
The Woman
good. maybe a little more than good given the ending. i didn't really like how the mystery part was kind of duh, and solved as sort of an afterthought. eh. good movie time spent. now i can say i've seen it.

MOster
I didn't pay quite as much attention to this one as I probably should have, and not because of the whole child rape thing.  The story was engaging enough, even though (as Leila says) the facts of the mystery weren't too difficult to suss  out.  There were some pretty cute story moments, and it was cool to see some of the actors (e.g. Higgins from "Magnum P.I.") having other things on their filmography.  Nicholson was still in his "Nicholson" phase, but he did a good job with hit stuff; and the hot women played hot women who knew they were hot and knew how to use it.

I'm not sure how many Polanski things I've seen, but this one didn't really impress me from the technical side.  Everything was fine, and obviously not phoned in.  But I didn't have any opportunity to say, "wow" at something happening on screen.

Nothing terrible, but I genuinely don't know what the fuss is and I'm not in any hurry to check out other Polanski stuff.