Chinatown review

Jack Nicholson gets more than he bargained for in the Polanski classic

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“Forget it, Jake it's Chinatown!”

The most memorable sign-off ever, right? Wrong.

Roman Polanski’s peerless gumshoe mystery actually ends with a testy cop ordering rubberneckers to “get off the street”.

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Fortunately that’s one of the few unremarkable lines in Robert Towne’s script, a magnificent dissection of corruption boasting career-best turns from Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway and John Huston.

A hurrah too for the ensemble, the likes of Burt Young and weak link in this 1974 masterpiece.

Unforgettable.

Neil Smith
Neil Smith
Freelance Writer

Neil Smith is a freelance film critic and writer who contributes regularly to Heat, SFX and Screen International. He's a long-time member of the London Film Critics’ Circle and was a contributing editor at Total Film for many years.

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