Chinatown:

Script is a masterpiece. Film is good but a little overrated I think. Suffers from too many mis-en-scene distractions. The overly melodramatic ending–much debated–just wasn’t conceived and shot right. You can tell the ending doesn’t go with the rest of the movie…and I don’t mean that thematically. I mean it was hurried and rushed, compared to everything else in the movie, which was meticulously planned out and executed. Towne wrote the script but Polanski changed the ending, after all.

It’s a good movie, well acted by the principals, but perhaps not as excellent as its reputation would imply.