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All this is amusingly ironic (in the true sense of the word) because The Two Jakes is about nothing so much as the hold the past maintains on us - particularly if we don't want it to let us go. For Towne, Chinatown was always meant to be the first in a trilogy about the latter-day desecration of Los Angeles encompassing a time period from the mid-1930s up to the cusp of the ‘60s. During that time, the development of L.A. and the struggles over water rights, oil rights and ultimately issues of privacy would have formed the backdrop for the character of private eye Jake Gittes (Nicholson) and his involvement with assorted characters and power brokers at the heart of these turmoils.

Roman Polanski's assured direction of Chinatown (which, like his take on Macbeth in 1971, seems informed by the still-fresh pain and psychic scars he bore from Sharon Tate's murder in 1969).

Coupled with Towne's corrosive and cynical screenplay, a classical detective story set 40 years in the past echoed the level of national distrust that the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation earlier in 1974 had pushed to new heights. It is the character of Cross in Chinatown - frighteningly embodied by Huston as the pinnacle of genial amorality and corruption - that gives the film the sharp edge that still cuts deep. Cross, a man with no qualms about devastating the land of his city or raping his daughter Evelyn (Faye Dunaway), and who remains unpunished at the film's end, is more than just a simple villain or an easy metaphor for the corruption on which Towne fixates. He is persuasive, jovial, crass but entertaining, and as he tacitly acknowledges in the line of dialogue at the start of this column, he has survived long enough to somehow rise up above whatever he may have done.

It is the specter of Cross that - for better and for worse - hangs over The Two Jakes. It would have been foolhardy to bring the character back with another actor (Huston had died in 1987) or to create a similar kindly face of evil (although Richard Farnsworth as an oil baron suggests similar veins of false joviality and aw-shucksness). Cross was never meant to be the focus of the second chapter; it is Katherine (played here by Meg Tilly), Evelyn's daughter/sister, and her relationship with her failed protector Gittes that is at the heart of Townes' screenplay. The level of menace that Cross/Huston brought ends up being missed, however. It is also brave that The Two Jakes makes no attempt to forge Chinatown-like twists and turns into its story. The flip side is that after a certain point, the two hour and 15 minute tale becomes dramatically inert, and in one crucial aspect, treads water mercilessly.

Nicholson stepped into the director's chair (Polanski was in the midst of his still continuous exile from the United States and Townes' attempt to head the production back in the mid-1980s hadn't met with much confidence) for only the third time in his career, following the sports drama Drive, He Said (1971) and the offbeat western Goin' South (1978). Being an actor, Nicholson favors quiet moments and quirky dialogue exchanges over spectacle and really, aside from some bookending explosions, there is no action in The Two Jakes.. Nicholson (the director) has an obvious affinity for the character of Gittes and exhibits a remarkable restraint in keeping Nicholson (the actor) from engaging in any numbers of scenery chewing that could derail the story. Gittes in The Two Jakes is now a decade older, a veteran of WWII and living fairly comfortably. He is still the (wobbly but dependable) moral compass of the story. As he addresses someone at one point, "My business may be disreputable but I'm not. I'm the leper in town with the most fingers."

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