“I don’t care who’s fault it is; his, hers, or the milkman’s. If one of them comes to me, it means they’re both miserable. That’s my job — putting people out of their misery.”

Al’s rating: One and half nostrils in working order.

Al’s review: That’s right. Long before George Lucas and the cool kids decided that resurrecting dead franchises was “in,” Jack Nicholson and Robert Towne got together and made Chinatown 2. And you know what? It’s pretty darn good.

Like Chinatown, The Two Jakes starts with a simple assignment that spirals way out of control. It takes us back to the world of private investigator Jake Gittes, who is fifteen years older and about a thousand times grouchier than when last we saw him. JJ is still Los Angeles’ number one PI for cuckolds and still has a bad habit of getting in way over his head.

His client, Julius ‘Jake’ Berman, hires him to tail his wife and come up with proof that she’s got a booty call on the side. JJ does his job but, when Berman unexpectedly produces a gun, simple infidelity gives way to murder and soon even murder proves to just be the tip of oil derrick. To make matters even worse, Jake finds himself hunted by Berman, the police, the mob, and a widow with very little emotional restraint. His audio recording of that night seems to have something special on it, something he decides to figure out on his own when some idle chatter turns up a name he thought he’d never hear again.

Jack Nicholson is, of course, excellent as the cynical but wounded JJ Gittes. He’s become even harder edged since the end of Chinatown, and it’s clear that the case has affected him deeply. Jake Berman (Harvey Keitel) proves a perfect foil for JJ, managing to be simultaneously likable and slippery. The women, Kitty Berman (Meg Tilly) and Lillian Bodine (Madeline Stowe), are both sultry and dangerous in typical genre fashion. Like any good noir cast, everyone keeps suspicion high and trust as a rare commodity.

But I feel I needs to make something clear: this is not a Great Movie. It’s a hell of a lot of fun and it moves at a brisk, enjoyable pace, but it’s not in the same league as Chinatown. Not even close. It’s not the fault of the plot or the story, although both have some hiccups. Characters in The Two Jakes speak and act in a way that feels less real and less interesting than in Chinatown. The scenes that make you laugh tend don’t elicit the right kind of laughter. It’s like they tread just close enough to parody that you’re finding it funny for the wrong reason. The whole level of the movie just feels lowered and that’s a real shame.

However, that doesn’t mean the cast and crew doesn’t care about it a great deal. In fact, the attention to detail and continuity in the film might be its crowning achievement. Chinatown unfolds in a very open world: Jake isn’t present for every single crucial plot point and characters slide in and out of the story as the situation changes. He’ll hear about things third-hand and gets evidence that his partners collected while he was off doing something else. That Los Angeles is a real city that doesn’t solely revolve around the actions and time tables of a half-dozen people.

L.A. in The Two Jakes is no different. It’s a little grittier and a little grander, but it’s the same place: a breathing, vital organism instead of just a location. Noah Cross is dead and his orange groves have been razed, but his vision of a lively and flourishing Los Angeles has come to pass. Lieutenant (now Captain) Escobar lost his leg in the war, but it’s not a plot point, it’s just life. Officer Loach is gone, but his son is now an up-and-coming detective and you can tell that Jake has held a grudge against him for his father’s actions in Chinatown a decade ago. This attention to continuity extends through every scene in the movie and makes me wish that more sequels would trust their audience like this and give it a try.

The story, as I mentioned, is a complicated mess about mineral rights and land ownership that never ties together quite as cleanly as its big brother. The film had a legendarily horrid eight years of preproduction and the effect of too many fingers in the pie has been smeared all over the finished product. It’s too bad, too, because the film does so much right that it deserves a better place in film history than it got. The angles and the shadows won’t make it into a film class. It doesn’t have the same classic lines or memorably wicked villain. But, The Two Jakes a good little film. Not a Great Film, but a good one. Forget about the rest of that stuff. It’s Chinatown.

Well, y’know, almost.

Intermission!

• The opening pullback through Jake’s camera? Love it.
• Jake’s nose has healed rather well?
• Escobar, Walsh, Khan, and (briefly) Evelyn reprising their roles from Chinatown?
• Gittes repeating his lines from the first movie?
• Tom Waits as a policeman in the scene where Gittes attacks Loach?
• The hilariously awkward sex scene?
• They managed to fit a lot more explosions in the movie this time, huh?