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The Two Jakes
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| The Two Jakes | |
|---|---|
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| Directed by | Jack Nicholson |
| Produced by | Robert Evans Harold Schneider |
| Written by | Robert Towne |
| Starring | Jack Nicholson Madeleine Stowe Harvey Keitel |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
| Release date(s) | August 10, 1990 (USA) |
| Running time | 138 min |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
The Two Jakes is the sequel to the 1974 movie Chinatown. Directed by and starring Jack Nicholson, it also stars Harvey Keitel, Meg Tilly, Madeleine Stowe, Richard Farnsworth, and Eli Wallach. It was released by Paramount Pictures on August 10, 1990. The film was crafted with a great attention to detail, but was neither a box office nor a critical success, possibly due to its inherent implausibility. However, Raymond Chandler argued decades earlier that most detective stories are implausible and must use art to seduce reader or audience skepticism. The Two Jakes may have failed where The Big Sleep succeeded, yet for some it remains a favorite. Plans for a third movie about the character of J.J. Gittes near the end of his life (the first film dealt with a young Jake, the second with a middle-aged Jake) have at this time been abandoned.
Los Angeles, 1948. Jake Berman has hired private investigator Jake 'J.J.' Gittes to catch his wife in the act of committing adultery. During the sting, Berman shoots the man who turns out to be his partner in a real estate company. Gittes, now under intense scrutiny for his unwitting part in the crime, must figure out if it was justifiable homicide or murder and how it connects with California's booming oil industry as well as his own past after he stumbles upon a wire recording during the investigation that mentions 'Katherine Mulwray,' the daughter of Faye Dunaway's ill-fated character from Chinatown.
- Screenwriter Robert Towne originally planned a trilogy of movies involving private investigator J.J. Gittes. The third movie, called Cloverleaf after a downtown Los Angeles interchange, was to take place in the 1950's and concerned the building of the massive freeway system and resultant air pollution, continuing with the backdrop of greedy developers and tycoons as in Chinatown (water rights) and The Two Jakes (oil).
- Originally, producer Robert Evans was to the play the "second" Jake but Towne, who was going to direct the film at that time, did not think he was the right choice and fired him. Nicholson ended up directing the film and not Towne.