Jack Nicholson’s '70s Psychological Detective Thriller Is a Masterpiece but Its Ending Doesn’t Do It Justice

I'm not really sure how I escaped my film school education without watching Chinatown, but it's one that's been on my ever-growing, never-ending watchlist for quite some time. The only things I knew about this movie were that it was directed by the controversial Roman Polanski, it starred Jack Nicholson as private eye Jake Gittes, and, at least I assumed, it was largely set in the Chinatown district of Los Angeles. Little did I know that Chinatownhardly takes place in Chinatown at all. Even more of a shock is that there's far more going on here than a simple neo-noir case of infidelity and murder. In fact, the film itself goes to great lengths to reinforce the fact that it’s different from its neo-noir predecessors, and the results are, well, debatable.