Long-postponed followup to Chinatown, with an awful lot of background info taken for granted after a sixteen-year break, and with a totally different visual style from its forerunner -- a bit like the relationship of The Hustler to The Color of Money, except that in the present case both films are period pieces, and neither of their styles is much in step with the appropriate period. Some of the production design is fun (Jeremy Railton, Richard Sawyer). As is some of the camerawork (Vilmos Zsigmond). As is the pivotal movie-star turn (Jack Nicholson). But all such fun is swamped and ultimately drowned amid some incredibly turbid plotting, which, like the Chinatown plot, never even produces a swallowable reason why the private eye should be on the case. The standardized narration ("Most cops' ethics are like the cars they drive, black and white") isn't much help, and the main thing that comes clear in all this is that the reputation of scriptwriter Robert Towne rests on little surface ripples, little isolated splashes, and not on the total panorama. The man can't tell a story to save his life. Harvey Keitel, Meg Tilly, Madeleine Stowe. (1990) — Duncan Shepherd
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