Plot summary (with spoilers): Jake Gittes. Private Eye. Los Angeles. 1937. Jake has some pictures to show his client, Curly, who hired Jake because he suspects his wife is having an affair. He's right. Curly leaves the office all broken up and a new client enters, a Mrs. Evelyn Mulwray. Mrs. Mulwray suspects her husband is cheating too, and wants Jake and his partners to find the evidence. Jake takes the case and winds up tailing Mr. Mulwray for a bit. Turns out Mr. Mulwray is the Chief Engineer for the Dept of Water and Power. Turns out he is also cheating on his wife. Jake takes pictures of Mulwray with the girl, and the next day they somehow turn up on the front page of the newspaper. Jake goes back to his office, and his partners do that thing in movies and TV where they try to tell him something and to stop talking, but Jake has a racist Chinese joke to tell, and they let him tell it despite the fact that Faye Dunaway and a Chinese guy are behind him in his office. Faye Dunaway says she's Mrs. Mulwray, the real Mrs. Mulwray, and she'll be seeing him in court!
Jake knows he's been set up. A patsie. A stoolie. He's determined to find out from who. But soon enough, he finds out Mulwray's been murdered. He's called to the scene of the crime by his old partner Escobar, who's now a lieutenant. Escobar's interviewing Evelyn Mulwray. She tells him that she hired Jake to uncover evidence of her husband's affair, and Jake quickly goes along with the lie.
Then Jake goes to the water reservoir where he last saw Mulwray alive to search for any clues. He hops the fence, and starts walking down an empty canal, and is quickly knocked over by a ton of flooding water. He gets out and is cornered by two rough looking goons. One holds him down why the other busts out a knife. He says Jake's too nosy, then cuts his nose with the knife, because goons love puns.
Later that night, Jake has dinner with Evelyn where she thanks him for going along with her lie and offers to send him a check so it will look legit. She also says she'll drop the lawsuit. Jake has a hugely comical and distracting bandage on his nose. They do some noir-ish flirting and he wants to know what she's hiding because dames is always hiding something. She admits she was also cheating on her husband. He tells her he thinks Mulwray was murdered, even though the cops say he was drowned.
Back at the office, Jake gets a call from Ida Sessions, the fake Mrs. Mulwray from before. She says she was hired by someone to fake him out but won't say who. But because she likes riddles, she tells him to look in that day's obituary for a clue.
So, cut to it: The plot is immensely detailed and complex and loops around and around in incredibly satisfying ways and everything fits together perfectly like a thousand-piece puzzle of something blue. Jake learns first that Evelyn's father Noah Cross used to own the Dept of Water and Power along with Mulwray. Cross hires Jake to find the girl Mulwray was cheating on his wife with. Jake learns that someone is using dead people's names to purchase all the land in the valley, which is where the LA water is being rerouted to. He almost gets killed by the goons again, but Evelyn pulls up in her car and saves him. They race off, and wind up making mad passionate noir-sex. Later, Evelyn receives a phone call and scrambles away, asking Jake to stay there. But yeah, he doesn't. He follows her to some hideout where he sees her Chinese assistant and the woman Mulwray was having an affair with. Jake wants to know who she really is. Evelyn says it's her sister, Katherine. (Slap! No wait, not yet). Then Jake gets a call from Escobar summoning him to a mysterious address. Turns out it's Ida Session's house. She's dead. Escobar thinks Evelyn did it and Jake is protecting her, but Jake laughs in the face of his ignorance. Escobar says Mulwray didn't drown, either. Salt water was found in his lungs. Jake goes back to Evelyn's house and discovers the salt-water pond in her backyard and the broken glasses at the bottom. He confronts Evelyn, accusing her of murder, but she denies it.
Stop lying! Who's the girl?!
My sister! (Slap!) My daughter! (Slap!) My sister! (Slap!) My daughter! (Slap!)
I really, really like this movie, but this uber-famous scene's a bit hairy for me. I mean, the slapping in time with the sister/daughter stuff skirts the line of ridiculousness. In fact, probably goes over it.
Evelyn admits her father raped her when she was 15 and Katherine was the result. (Wow, only a totally depraved creep would rape an underage girl. Isn't that right, Mr. Polanski?) Jake believes her, but he's already called the cops, thinking she was guilty of murder. He tells them to run they'll meet at Evelyn's assistant's house in two hours. And where does he live? Why, Chinatown, of course. Evelyn also says the glasses aren't her husband's because he didn't wear bifocals.
Then the cops show up and Jake tells Escobar the Evelyn is gone and is probably staying at her maid's in San Pedro. Escobar makes Jake go with them and says he'll arrest Jake for accessory to murder if they don't find Evelyn there. They arrive at what Jake says is the maid's house, and Jake asks for a couple minutes alone with Evelyn first. Escobar relents.
Jake goes up the house, knocks on the door...and Curly answers. You know, from the first scene! That's fucking ingenious, I'll tell you what. Talk about the economy of characters. Jake sneaks out the back with Curly and asks him to meet Evelyn and Katherine in Chinatown and drive them to safety.
Meanwhile, Jake goes back to confront Cross for murdering his son-in-law and buying up half the valley with fake names, but Cross' goons grab Jake and force him to take them all the Chinatown.
The final confrontation takes place in Chinatown, where Escobar tries again to arrest Jake, while Evelyn tries to drive off with Katherine. Cross tries to stop Evelyn from taking his "granddaughter" (UGH) away from him, but Evelyn shoots him and drives off. Escobar calls at her to halt and shoots at her. He hits her and she crashes. Everyone runs towards the car and sees that Evelyn is clearly dead. Cross comforts a screaming Katherine (UGH UGH) while Jake stares in shock. Escobar barks at Jake to leave, that he's doing him a favor. Jake turns to go, then turns around as if to attack Escobar, but his partner holds him back.
Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown.
Review: So, as I said earlier, the plot twists and turns in dozens of extremely smart and satisfying ways that are basically too numerous to go into detail. I honestly can't remember a smarter script, period. And the best part is, at no point, not ever, did I ask myself, "Now why did Character X do that or go there?", which is basically unheard of for this type of genre. Everything makes perfect sense. No plot holes, no fuss, no muss. No suspension of disbelief required, with the lone exception of the dumb scene where Jake's telling the dumb Chinese joke and none of his partners interrupt him and tell him to shut up and turn around. And despite being extremely plot-heavy and needing a ton of exposition, the script still is able to bring three-dimensional humanity to all the major characters, and have scenes that are thrilling and emotional, as well as informative. The ending is memorably and appropriately bleak, too. There's a reason why "Chinatown" is now just a metaphor for hopelessly corrupt and depraved. Jack of course is great too, but Jack's always great.
Stars: Four and a half out of five.
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