So here they are, 16 years on from Chinatown. The two Roberts - Evans from Paramount producing one of the last meaningful pictures of his career, Towne scripting one of the finer efforts of his later years - and Nicholson. But no small Pole directing and no Faye Dunaway. These are gaps that Jack's acting and directing does not fill.

Private eye Jake Gittes returns, cruising through a profitable postwar L.A. of divorces and convertibles, looking and feeling every inch 11 years older. He meets Jake Berman (Harvey Keitel), who's selling houses outside the city. The fact that he's building any, trying to make money from the murderous movie landscape of Los Angeles, must be suspicious. And so it proves. He's married to a mysterious blonde, called Kitty (Meg Tilly). Their psuedo-innocent deceptions drag Gittes back to the family he became embroiled with in the first place - the Mulwrays.

The script is one of the film's finer points, certainly stronger than the fitful plotting. The voice-over, in particular, is marvellously written - deadpan, fond and cynical about the city. "There's one thing I've learned about the truth. A little goes a long way". But the aphoristic witticisms come at a price. They slow the action down.

This is tied to problems of the plot - curious, given Towne's pedigree - which spurts and slows, like a learner driver, while being intricate and quite clever. The uneven pace is matched by Nicholson's own pacing difficulties.

The first scene is a good example of the film's strengths and weaknesses. It opens on an out-of-focus couple beginning to make love. Nicholson's dry faux-weary voice tells us how his job is "putting people out of their misery", but his tone doesn't ask us to believe it. This starts to drag a little until a zoom out reveals the lovers, reflected in Nicholson's camera lens, a shot good enough to pull you back into interest. Then you notice the focus ring swinging wildly through its range, presumably to keep your attention, which is annoyingly unrealistic, and enjoyment slides downwards again.

Atomistically, The Two Jakes could be a worthy relative to Chinatown, perhaps even a successful heir. The visual direction is winningly stylish. Nicholson and cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond clearly love mirrors and use them to great effect. But the larger picture refuses to cohere, thus wasting Towne's vision of L.A. and much of Nicholson's fine performance. That the rest of the acting is lacklustre doesn't help.

By the time the Mulwray secret - I'll not say more - has been revealed 15 minutes too late, this has become a film of incidental pleasures, of which there are many. The recreation of Fifties L.A. is immaculate and imaginative. Also to enjoy is the fecund, yet underdeveloped twining of the two sources of liquid corruption that make this desert megalopolis function - water and oil. The details, which hark back to the earlier film - Mulwray Drive, instead of Mulholland, and re-visiting the orange groves on the way to the new subdivision - are fun.

Chinatown was wonderful, despite choking on its own ending. The Two Jakes is almost wonderful.