Writer Robert Towne had conceived of 'Chinatown' as the first part of a trilogy that would use a film noir formate to explore how buisness interests subverted the public good in the Los Angeles area of the 1930s to 1950s. 'Chinatown' was a big hit both critically and comerically in 1974 but it's sequel languished in development hell, in part due to director Roman Polanski's legal exile in Europe. 'The Two Jakes' would finally hit cinemas in 1990, with star Jack Nicholson directing, the film garned mixed critical notices and did poor at the box office, taking in $10 million off a $25 million budget (whereas 'Chinatown' had a theatrical return of almost 5 times what it cost to make).
It's now 1948, 11 years after the events of the first film. The "Two Jakes" of the title are returning P.I. Jake Gittes (Nicholson) and his client Jake Berman (Harvey Keitel) who has hired him to investigate his wife's infidelity (an inverse of the wife hires Jake to investigate husband's infidelity plot of the first film). Like with the original movie a seemingly minor case serves as a doorway into larger corrupt doings. This film is very much a sequel not just in some returning characters and the tackeling of similar themes, but Gittes stumbles onto things directly related to the events of the first film, which reignite his guilt over how that case ended.
The story is actually very strong, the cast good and there are some fine performances, most unexpectedly from Meg Tilly, though Robert Farnsworth has a nice monoluge. The film is no 'Chinatown' however, that lighting in a bottle could not be replicated, at least not without Polanski. It's still a good film however and it was neat to see the changes in Gittes and Los Angeles, the two central characters of this saga. ***
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