Amazon.com Essentials:
Roman Polanski's brooding film noir exposes the darkest
side of the land of sunshine, the Los Angeles of the 1930s, where
power is the only currency--and the only real thing worth buying. Jack
Nicholson is J.J. Gittes, a private eye in the Chandler mold, who
during a routine straying-spouse investigation finds himself drawn
deeper and deeper into a jigsaw puzzle of clues and corruption. The
glamorous Evelyn Mulwray (a dazzling Faye Dunaway) and her titanic
father, Noah Cross (John Huston), are at the black-hole center of this
tale of treachery, incest, and political bribery. The crackling,
hard-bitten script by Robert Towne won a well-deserved Oscar, and the
muted color cinematography makes the goings-on seem both bleak and
impossibly vibrant. Polanski himself has a brief, memorable cameo as
the thug who tangles with Nicholson's nose. One of the greatest, most
completely satisfying crime films of all time. --Anne Hurley
