Film

Chinatown

Name: Chinatown
Genre: Crime, Mystery, Thriller
Released: 1974
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, Perry Lopez, Burt Young

Chinatown is a slow-burn, sun-bleached noir where the detective is smart enough to ask the right questions and still too small to stop what he uncovers. Jack Nicholson's Gittes chases an affair and stumbles into a conspiracy about land, water, and power that swallows everyone in it. Gorgeous, unhurried, and deliberately unsentimental — this is pulp with real teeth and an ending that refuses comfort.

TMDb rating

7.9

If you liked this

L.A. Confidential1997

Same city, same rot, three decades later — corruption, cover-ups, and moral compromise dressed up as a glossy, star-studded crime epic with a killer ensemble and a puzzle just as bleak.

But Bigger and splashier, more interested in twisty spectacle than in Chinatown's quiet, creeping dread.

The Long Goodbye1973

Altman's shaggy, sun-bleached Philip Marlowe, made the very same year as Chinatown, trades doom for wry exhaustion and turns the detective story into a shrug at a world gone rotten.

But Elliott Gould's Marlowe is deliberately loose and mumbly; if you want tight plotting, this will frustrate you.

The Conversation1974

Same year, same paranoid unease about California and power — Coppola's surveillance thriller about a man undone by exactly what he refuses to see.

But Much quieter and more interior — almost no action, and Hackman's character is closed-off rather than charming.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

In a Lonely Place1950no page yet

Both strip the detective genre down to expose rot in intimacy and institutions rather than solve a puzzle; this is the noir Chinatown was quietly answering twenty-four years later.

Bogart plays a screenwriter suspected of murder in a film less interested in whodunit than in how suspicion corrodes intimacy — the same unsentimental gaze Chinatown turns on love and power.

But No twisty plot to chase — it's a character study, and the pacing is theatrical by today's standards.

The Maltese Falcon1941

John Huston, who plays Chinatown's monstrous villain, directed this genre-defining private-eye picture — watch Bogart's Spade and you'll see exactly where Gittes's swagger comes from.

But Black-and-white studio-era pacing and dialogue-heavy plotting can feel stagey next to Chinatown's naturalism.

Body Heat1981

Lush, sweaty neo-noir that shares Chinatown's appetite for doom but turns the heat all the way up on desire, betrayal, and bad decisions.

But More erotic thriller than mystery — simpler plotting, hornier and less cerebral than Chinatown.

Devil in a Blue Dress1995no page yet

Denzel Washington as a detective navigating 1940s LA's racial and political fault lines — the same genre engine turned toward a story Chinatown never tells.

But Less structurally airtight; leans on atmosphere and social texture more than a tight mystery.

Klute1971

A small-town detective adrift in a corrupt, morally slippery city, anchored by a Jane Fonda performance as unsettled and exposed as Gittes ever gets.

But Slower and more psychological; the mystery plot is secondary to the character study.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit1988

Pure affectionate homage — noir plotting, a washed-up detective, corrupt LA power players, all played for laughs, cartoons, and a genuinely twisty mystery underneath.

But Family-friendly and cartoonish; if you want Chinatown's bleakness, this is nearly its opposite.

Inherent Vice2014

Paul Thomas Anderson's stoned detective riff, set in the same LA, chasing the same paranoid conspiracies about land and power through a haze of weed smoke.

But Deliberately disorienting plot, shaggy and hard to follow — closer to a fever dream than a mystery.

Water & Power: A California Heist2017no page yet

Robert Towne fictionalized California's real water wars to write Chinatown's plot; this film shows you the nonfiction version, still unresolved decades later.

The real scandal behind Chinatown's fictional water grab — modern California's drought and the political machinery still quietly deciding who gets to drink.

But It's a straightforward advocacy documentary with no style or suspense — purely informational, occasionally dry.

There Will Be Blood2007

Both use California's exploited landscape as a moral crime scene, tracing how greed for resources corrupts everyone who touches it, in wildly different decades and registers.

Swap the detective mystery for an oil epic but keep the subject — a Californian original sin of land, water, and family, where ambition curdles into monstrousness.

But Nearly three hours of slow-building dread with almost none of Chinatown's genre pleasures — arthouse patience, not pulp.