Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
Private eye Jake Gittes lives off of the murky moral climate of sunbaked, pre-World War II Southern California. Hired by a beautiful socialite to investigate her husband's extra-marital affair, Gittes is swept into a maelstrom of double dealings and deadly deceits, uncovering a web of personal and political scandals that come crashing together.
Chinatown is one of cinema's masterworks, but the rules demand at least one category held back. The ending is genuinely devastating and iconic, yet it is the single element most divisive — its brutal nihilism, while intentional and thematically perfect, represents a deliberate refusal of conventional satisfaction that some regard as the film's crowning achievement and others find punishing. Still, across the board this film earns near-perfect marks: Robert Towne's screenplay is a labyrinthine neo-noir masterpiece (Plot 4), Nicholson, Dunaway, and Huston deliver career-defining performances (Acting 4), John Alonzo's sun-drenched, oppressive cinematography is among the finest of the decade (Cinematography 4), and the film's singular voice — a fatalistic, mythic deconstruction of the detective genre — is utterly distinctive (Novelty 4). The ending must be held at 3 not because it fails, but because among these extraordinary categories it is the one that polarizes rather than universally transcends.