Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: DVD EAN: 0097361224442 Format: Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC Label: Paramount Home Video Manufacturer: Paramount Home Video Number Of Items: 1 Publisher: Paramount Home Video Region Code: 1 Release Date: November 06, 2007 Running Time: 130 minutes Sales Rank: 2505 Studio: Paramount Home Video Theatrical Release Date: June 20, 1974
Description: Landmark movie in the film noir tradition, Roman Polanski's Chinatown stands as a true screen classic. Jack Nicholson is private eye Jake Gittes, living off the murky moral climate of sunbaked, pre-war Southern California. Hired by a beautiful socialite (Faye Dunaway) to investigate her husband's extra-marital affair, Gittes is swept into a maelstrom of double dealings and deadly deceits, uncovering a web of personal and political scandals that come crashing together for one, unforgettable night in...Chinatown. Co-starring film legend John Huston and featuring an Academy Award®-winning script by Robert Towne, Chinatown captures a lost era in a masterfully woven movie that remains a timeless gem.
Amazon.com essential video: 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
Digital Life Reviews
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Very Good, but not Great
Pros
Fantastic melange of nostalgia, feel-good, period-piece, proto-noir, detective, horror, drama and suspense movies - one wishes more movie makers would riff like this instead of making the type of hidebound, genre-tight movies that utterly fail to spark the imagination of the viewer.
Shines with intelligence, beauty and craftsmanship of the highest order - the film-makers really poured their hearts and souls into making this movie and it can't but help rub off on the viewer.
Tucker, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - outside of latter-day Bollywood I can think of very few movies in which the cinematography is so unrelentingly beautiful, joyful and uplifting.
Cons
Has no comment to make on the human condition which distinguishes the truly great films from the merely very good - it's a very nice plot about corruption, incest and so on, ... Read More
Rating: - A crime noir has never looked this good...
Finally; a crime noir that works. After watching quite a few lackluster film noirs I decided to revisit `Chinatown' to see if it still held up as the greatest film noir of all time and, quite honestly, it does. Polanski gets everything right with this one, creating a film that is stunning, captivating, dark and brooding while always maintaining a level of hope that helps glue the audience to their seats (even if that hope is crushed in the devastating finale). There are few films that have been able to capture this aura, the most recent being `L.A. Confidential'.
The crime noir is something difficult to master, but Polanski masters is effortlessly.
`Chinatown' revolves around private detective Jake Gittes who is hired by a woman claiming to be a jilted wife to follow her husband and see if he is indeed having an affair. When the husband turns up dead and she winds up not actually being ... Read More
Rating: - Great, although painful, movie
It took me a while to get this movie. I ordered a "like new" version and it was filled with scratches and was unwatchable. It took a little finagling to get a better copy, but it ended up working out. I would've ended up giving it 5 stars had the disc be in "like new" condition.
I really like this movie, although "the nose" scene (so I don't ruin in for anyone who hasn't seen it, but specific enough for the people who have seen it to understand) was incredibly disturbing, the performances of Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway were riveting. It is one of the most heart-wrenching and suspenseful movies I have ever seen.
I would suggest this movie. It might be too much for the average viewer to take, but moreover, it is a movie to watch.
Rating: - One of the greatest films of all time, and one of Nicholson's best too
This is a film you absolutely need to see at least twice. The first time through you'll be gasping for air, trying to keep up with the twists and turns in the plot. The second time through, you can sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride. Those willing to view it again and again will find more and more to love in this amazingly dense but satisfying film. Jack Nicholson is perfect in the lead role, and the rest of the cast is equally at home in roles that flesh out this well woven tale. The look and feel of this film is fantastic.
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- Very Good, but not Great
- A crime noir has never looked this good...
