The Two Jakes 4K 1990 Ultra HD 2160p

Los Angeles, 1948. Jake is hired by Jake Berman, a land dealer with the same name. Berman is convinced that his wife is cheating on him and asks Gittes to dig up all the details he can. Gittes, in turn, not only finds out all the details, but also offers Berman the opportunity to catch his wife red-handed, right in the middle of an intimate rendezvous.

The two Jakes set up an ambush for the unfaithful spouse. At the most crucial moment, instead of making a scene of jealousy, Berman kills his wife's lover. All of this could easily have been written off as a crime of passion, if the victim had not been Berman's business partner.

After the death of his partner, Jake Berman is left with all the money. Now Gittes has to find out whether what happened was an accident or a cold-blooded murder...

User Review

The film takes place a decade after the tragic events in Los Angeles' Chinatown. Private investigator Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is hired by his namesake, real estate agent Jake Berman (Harvey Keitel), to follow his wife Kitty (Meg Tilly), who is cheating on him with another man. However, the joint surveillance operation takes an unexpected turn when Jake Berman, instead of simply “catching” his wife in the act in a hotel room, kills her lover in a fit of uncontrollable rage. However, this murder does not look like a crime of passion, which troubles the brave detective Gittes, and he once again finds himself involved in the machinations surrounding the natural resources of Los Angeles, corrupt law enforcement officers, and, on top of that, something from the dark past will surface.

The third (and last) directorial work of the great actor Jack Nicholson, unfortunately, belongs to the category of unnecessary and helpless sequels to immortal classics. This inevitably brings to mind the situation with William Friedkin's classic film The French Connection (1971), which received an equally depressing sequel from John Boorman four years later. Jack Nicholson had planned to make Roman Polanski's original Chinatown into a trilogy, but these plans fell through due to the box office fiasco of Two Jakes and lukewarm reviews from critics. While masterful cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond (The Deer Hunter, Scarecrow, , etc.) managed to convey the atmosphere of noir and the spirit of the 1940s quite well, Jack Nicholson clearly should not have stepped behind the camera (screenwriter Robert Towne, who also wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay for Chinatown, was in line for the director's chair). While there are no complaints about Nicholson as an actor, or about the rest of the cast, there are many objective complaints about him as a director. He has created a film that is disjointed in terms of its screen narrative, with an unclear pace, which by the end becomes increasingly tiresome with its sense of dragging on. After all, Jack Nicholson is no Roman Polanski when it comes to directing, and he also failed to build tension, presenting the viewer with a sluggish noir-style police thriller that, for the most part, seems far-fetched when viewed in the context of the first part, and, as many have already noted, is more of a sentimental epilogue to Chinatown — nostalgic sighs for a past that cannot be brought back.

Info Video

Codec: HEVC / H.265 (78.0 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR10
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1

Info Audio

#English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
#English: FLAC 2.0
#German: Dolby Digital 2.0
#French: Dolby Digital 2.0
#Japanese: Dolby Digital 2.0

Info Subtitles