August 10, 1990 | Are you ready for a film in the grand tradition of a Raymond Chandler mystery? Not in the tradition of movies based on Chandler, mind you, but in the tradition of an actual Chandler novel -- something like Farewell, My Lovely or, better still, The Long Goodbye?

If so, then place The Two Jakes, the long-delayed, eagerly awaited sequel to Chinatown (1974), on your must-see list.

This is a richly detailed, uncommonly satisfying film that places some heavy demands on its audience. Forget about the breakneck, quick-cut pacing and the simple-minded, by-the-numbers plotting that are so common to contemporary mystery-thrillers. The Two Jakes is a movie for grown-ups with full-size attention spans, for people who appreciate intricate storylines and full-bodied characters, and who won’t be discomforted by the deliberate, methodical pacing that a moviemaker requires to tell this kind of complex story.

Seeing this film, and savoring it, is very much like paging through an adventure of Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, the knight errant who could walk down mean streets only because he was neither tarnished nor afraid.

J.J. Gittes, a grizzled gumshoe in the Marlowe mold, is the hero of the piece. Jack Nicholson plays him again, splendidly, as he did in Chinatown. The new story is set in 1948, 11 years after Gittes ran afoul of the rich and corrupt Noah Cross, and failed to prevent the death of the fatally attractive Evelyn Mulwray. In post-war Los Angeles, where oil wells are more plentiful than palm trees, Gittes is flush with success -- he has a posh new office, an upscale fiancée and a country-club membership. But he’s still a specialist in the unsavory trade of marital investigations.

“I suppose it’s fair to say that infidelity made me what I am today.” That’s the opening line of the film, spoken as narration by our hero. Gittes is being sarcastic, sort of, but he’s also more dead-on accurate than perhaps even he realizes. It was an infidelity case that got him ensnared in the dark undercurrents of Chinatown, leaving him haunted by should-have-dones and might-have-beens. And in The Two Jakes, it’s another infidelity case that throws him into another complex pattern of betrayals and hidden agendas.

“You might think you know what’s going on around here -- but you don’t.” Gittes has heard that line somewhere before -- from Noah Cross, as a matter of fact, as the tyrannical wheeler-dealer reveling in his power. The same words are used by Jake Berman (Harvey Keitel), Gittes’ new client. This time, though, it’s a puzzle as to who really holds the power, who’s really the master of the game.

At first, Gittes fears the absolute worst -- that, once again, he’s been set up as sucker. Berman hires Gittes to obtain evidence against Berman’s unfaithful wife, Kitty (Meg Tilly), who’s having an affair with Berman’s business partner. But while Gittes is recording their adulterous tryst, Berman smashes into their hotel room and shoots his wife’s lover. Berman claims it is a crime of passion. Gittes knows -- or, to be more precise, he thinks he knows -- that it’s cold-blooded murder, committed so Berman can have all the profits from a thriving new real estate venture.

But then Gittes listens closely to his wire recording of the shooting, and hears a name from his past. That’s all it takes for him to re-open an old file, and passionately lunge at a second chance.

As his own director, Nicholson has accepted a daunting challenge - making a film that will be measured against Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, a broodingly bluesy, darkly compelling film that, after countless reruns in revival houses and home video, is firmly established as a classic of our popular culture. The Two Jakes doesn’t match its predecessor -- really, what film could? -- but it is a worthy effort to continue the story, with the same scriptwriter, Robert Towne, and the same leading actor returning to follow J.J. Gittes down those same mean streets once more.

As an actor, Nicholson gives his least mannered, most affecting performance in several years. His Gittes has grown wiser and, in every sense of the term, weightier. And he is even more cynical about human nature. But he has prospered without ever seriously deviating from his private code of honor. As he explains it, “In this town, I’m the leper with the most fingers.”

The Two Jakes lacks the gravity of menace provided by the late John Huston in Chinatown. But the sequel relies even more heavily on the moral balance of J.J. Gittes, and Nicholson provides more than enough substance and emotional truth to give the movie its equilibrium.

Nicholson has given himself the benefit of a great supporting cast: Harvey Keitel as the mysterious Jake Berman; Meg Tilly as Berman’s wife, who takes a long time to reveal a fairly obvious plot twist; Eli Wallach as a cunning defense attorney; Ruben Blades as a thug with friends in high places; Frederic Forrest as a lawyer with clients in even higher places; David Keith as a slick cop who makes the mistake of goading Gittes; Richard Farnsworth as an insistently folksy oil tycoon; Perry Lopez as Lou Escobar, Gittes’ only friend on the L.A. police force; and Madeleine Stowe as a predatory widow who, to paraphrase Raymond Chandler, tries to sit in Gittes’ lap while he’s standing up.

Chandler isn’t the only great detective novelist whose trademark style is evoked here. There’s also more than a hint of Ross Macdonald -- in the vivid evocation of a lushly corrupt Los Angeles (superbly photographed by Vilmos Zsigmond), in the fatalistic way the past reaches out and backhands the characters. You can’t help being aware of a heaviness to some scenes, as everything slows to a halt while Nicholson sustains a specific note of wistful longing, or allows Gittes to philosophize and crack wise too long. But even here, The Two Jakes rewards your patience. Take your time, give the movie a chance. It’s not Chinatown, but it’s closer than we had any right to expect.