My goodness. What an awful ending. It was as if they got too deep into all their twists and turns that, instead of attempting to untie the knots and resolve the plot, they just decided to end it and be done with it as abruptly as possible. It also felt like it was a sequel to another movie that actually had something to do with or at least used the subject of Chinatown for more than a couple ominous and vague one-liners. It honestly felt like this was Chinatown 2 and I missed the far superior, more exciting Chinatown 1. It was as if the writers knew they liked the line "Forget it, Jake. That's Chinatown" but were so eager to end the movie with it that didn't bother to explain to the audience the significance of the line. It was like a callback that didn't have an initial call. A comparable example is the line TIA (This Is Africa) in Blood Diamond. It's used early on and you get a sense of its many different meanings and it's supposed familiarity amongst Africans and then the line is called back in a very moving way at the end. That's what the Chinatown line at the end should have been, but wasn't. I am just in awe as to the lengths people in the film community will go to to fall in line with the status quo on things like this. I cannot imagine anyone has ever seen Chinatown and been moved or enthralled to the point of wanting to watch it again. It seems to me that, much like the contemporary art community, film critics put on kid gloves when it comes to the so-called noir genre and are absolutely ready and willing to write off any lack of depth, lack of character development, and terrible endings as insightful and artistic noir touches. Why even name the movie Chinatown if there are only going to be 4 lines in the whole movie having to do with Chinatown? So many roads to nowhere in that movie. And then in the end, the whole movie is a road to nowhere. Chinatown could be summed up as: a private detective spends two hours unfurling an intricate web of conspiracy and corruption and then it just ends.
Review of Chinatown
