THE MOVIE:

Let's face it, some sequels never need to be made. Though apparently writer Robert Towne originally intended the 1974 crime picture Chinatown to be the start of a trilogy, the long-delayed second part, The Two Jakes, feels about as superfluous as sequels come.

Directed by Jack Nicholson, who also reprises his role as Jake Gittes, the 1990 period piece advanced the characters by over a decade, moving the story into 1948. Whereas the plot for Chinatown revolved around the exploitation of the land via its water resources and the secrets kept by the powerful men who seek to control the march of progress, The Two Jakes dips Nicholson's private detective into a big pool of oil. I suspect it's this gooey substance that clouded his ability to see what a bad choice this flick was.

Which isn't to say that The Two Jakes is horrible, it's merely serviceable. Chinatown was a masterpiece of the hardboiled genre, constructed with a plot so serpentine in its convolutions, it would make even Raymond Chandler blush. Roman Polanski directed the original, spritzing it with a sickness that permeated the very air the Los Angelinos were breathing. Times were changing, powers were shifting, and there was a feeling that everything was rotting--except for the private detective that would stand alone to do what was right.

The Two Jakes has none of that special atmosphere. Though it makes thematic sense that this movie would reflect post-War optimism rather than pre-War dread, the seismic shift in attitude and style sucks the uniqueness right out of it. Bathed in a nauseating orange glow and full of blinding sunlight, The Two Jakes looks just like any number of conventional Hollywood pictures. It's all right if Nicholson and Towne wanted to exploit the false face Southern California has turned into a billion dollar industry, but the tradition they set up sixteen years prior would have us believe they would eventually show the festering truth that lies behind the spray-on tan.

Perhaps had they avoided actually making it a sequel to the previous film, they wouldn't have gotten so much guff over it. It's not like the things Gittes uncovered in Chinatown are such pressing concerns that their unearthing in The Two Jakes has any great resonance. On the contrary, the themes of being haunted by the past come off as undercooked, and the winking connections to the first film seem forced. Did we really need the son of Jake's police rival in Chinatown sitting at the homicide desk in this one? Not really.

Had The Two Jakes stood on its own as an homage to old 1940s film noir, it might have actually fared better. The story about the land developer (Harvey Keitel) killing his business partner after finding out he's having an affair with his wife (Meg Tilly), inadvertently exposing closed-door shenanigans in their business, would have made for a decent private eye movie. Nicholson would have still had to sort out some of the inconsistencies in the movie's tone--Jake's outbursts come off as incongruous and crass, Madeleine Stowe playing the femme fatale for laughs--but he'd have at least been able to do his business without the shadow of past accomplishments looming over the production.

As a sequel, The Two Jakes neither forges its own path nor enhances the legacy of Chinatown. Really, it just sits there, doing nothing much at all.

THE DVD

Video:
Though The Two Jakes has been given a widescreen anamorphic transfer, the picture quality has some real issues. Though Jack Nicholson and his d.p. Vilmos Zsigmond (The Black Dahlia, Heaven's Gate) are showing California in all of its blown-out, sunny glory, full of orange sunsets and browning flesh, it looked to me like this DVD was running a little hot. There is too much orange and often the actors look like they were glowing. I may be wrong, I have nothing to compare this to, but it looks like someone cranked the levels too far to one side of the spectrum.

Also, I noticed some edge enhancement in a few scenes, the resolution getting real shimmery in parts.

Sound:
Though the picture quality was questionable, the 5.1 Dolby surround was really strong. Excellent clarity and a full use of the range of speakers.

Alternate mixes include French, English, and Spanish 2.0 soundtracks and a Portuguese dub in mono. All four languages also have subtitles.

Extras:
The perfunctory trailer is included, as well as a featurette called "Jack on Jake." This new eighteen-minute documentary has a contemporary interview with Nicholson talking about the differences of directing and acting and about the intended Chinatown trilogy as it relates to The Two Jakes. He covers casting and the writing and other aspects of the beleaguered production. In addition to clips, there are production photos and some on-set footage in the midst of the talking.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
Rent It. The Two Jakes is just one of those sad mistakes that cinephiles can only shrug their shoulders over and avoid on their scroll past lesser cable channels, who buy up bad sequels in bunches and play the crap out of them. This 1990 follow-up to 1974's Chinatown falls so short of the mark set by its predecessor, it would have been better off being classified as its own thing. A serviceable retread of the private eye genre, Jack Nicholson does a good job acting his age, and there are some involving plot permutations, but overall, it's a no-go effort.

Jamie S. Rich is a novelist and comic book writer. He is best known for his collaborations with Joelle Jones, including the hardboiled crime comic book You Have Killed Me, the challenging romance 12 Reasons Why I Love Her, and the 2007 prose novel Have You Seen the Horizon Lately?, for which Jones did the cover. All three were published by Oni Press. His most recent projects include the futuristic romance A Boy and a Girl with Natalie Nourigat; Archer Coe and the Thousand Natural Shocks, a loopy crime tale drawn by Dan Christensen; and the horror miniseries Madame Frankenstein, a collaboration with Megan Levens. Follow Rich's blog at Confessions123.com.