Chinatown

The plots of the film noirs have been too complicated. Chinatown is the same way. It is hard to follow or summarize the plot of Chinatown. I can summarize the plot of Lord of the Rings easily in one sentence: (The evil dude made an evil ring that can only be destroyed in a volcano, and Frodo found the ring and needs to get to the volcano to destroy it.) Is it possible to summarize Chinatown in one sentence? Jake Gittes private detective who investigates a man to uncover any adultery, and Jake finds out that the woman who hired him is not the man’s wife after the guy turns up dead. I could go on, but that would be a run-on sentence. The spark note version of the spark-notes on this movie is more than a full complete sentence, which tells you something about how the plot is too complex for a simple movie-going audience to follow and enjoy. Watching movies is how I turn my brain off. I do not like movies that make me turn that horrible thing back on.
Speaking from the standpoint of one of those nuts that likes that type of movie, now. I thought the plot was very cleaver and interesting. The twist in the plot made you think back on earlier events in the movie and say to yourself, “Oh yeah that makes sense.” The title of the film made it even more intriguing because only the ending of the movie takes place in Chinatown. It is hard to give specifics because I do not want to give away the ending. One of the new revisionist aspects of the movie that I noticed was the surprise versus suspense. Kiss Me Deadly had suspense in it. Specifically, the popcorn attack. Mike Hammer is being stalked by a guy for a little bit before the stalker attacks the Hammer. He throws popcorn in the stalker’s face, causing him to be incapacitated, then the Hammer nails (I know it’s a bad pun!) the stalker with his fist of furry (who here did not realize that I misspelled fury until this parenthetical?). Be honest. Gittes is often surprised not suspended. Gittes goes to a place and as he is on his merry way he gets shot at from out of nowhere. The movie did not even show the shooters aiming (how did they miss?) before the shots were fired; it was a total surprise.