Lights, camera, action!
Fool Me Once…
Jakes Gittes is a private investigator in L.A. You just know that things are about to get real sleazy, real fast.
A woman claiming to be Evelyn Mulwray, the wife of the L.A. water commissioner, hires Jake Gittes to see if her husband's committing adultery. He follows through, and snaps some photos of the guy—Hollis Mulwray—kissing a girl.
Seems simple, right?
Wrong. (We wouldn't have much of a movie if that was it.)
Turns out, Gittes has also discovered that Hollis has been trying to figure out why someone's stealing water from the already drought-stricken City of Angels. Things get even more complicated when Hollis is found drowned in a city reservoir—a "suicide" that's really a murder—and the woman who claimed to be Evelyn Mulwray turns out to have been an impostor hired by someone who wanted to frame Hollis.
But wait. It's about to get even more complicated.
The whole thing looks like a plot to set Hollis up for adultery and then make it look like he committed suicide—which is exactly what it is. Jake starts unraveling the mystery, and when he runs into the real Evelyn Mulwray, she seems to know more than she's willing to reveal.
Eventually, Jake discovers that someone has been buying up land in the Northwest Valley outside L.A. using the names of retirement home residents to cover up the identity of the real owner. And then, they've been moving stolen water to this land, where it'll drain into a kind of natural reservoir underground, so they can then resell it to the drought-stricken city.
Basically, they're controlling L.A.'s water supply—and its destiny.
Jake eventually realizes that the man behind all this is Noah Cross, Hollis' former partner…who also happens to be Evelyn's insanely rich father.
Father Knows Worst
Jake starts to fall for Evelyn, and he sleeps with her. (This is the real Evelyn, now—the fake Evelyn, whose real name is Ida Sessions, gets murdered. The bad guys wanted to tie up loose ends, evidently).
Real Evelyn also warns him away from investigating her father, saying that he's dangerous and crazy…but, shortly afterward, he discovers that Evelyn seems to be holding the girl who he saw kissing Hollis captive. He thinks that Evelyn knows who murdered Hollis and is holding the girl to prevent her from blabbing.
On top of this, Jake discovers that Hollis didn't drown in the reservoir…but in the saltwater pond in Evelyn's backyard. Sketchy, right?
When he confronts her about this (and slaps her a bunch of times, because he's a noir jerk) Evelyn breaks down and admits the truth: the girl she seems to be holding captive is actually her sister…and her daughter.
Yep. You read that right.
Her father committed incest with her when she was a teenager, and this is the child they had. Noah also murdered Hollis by drowning him in the pond, and Evelyn is trying to escape her father and bring her daughter to safety, "safety" being "where her father/grandfather can't get to her." Jake agrees to help her, because he's not actually so bad.
After Jake confronts Noah, Noah and a henchman drag Jake to L.A.'s Chinatown where Evelyn's trying to make her escape. The cops show up at the same time and try to arrest Evelyn, thinking she's the murderer—they won't listen to Jake when he tells them the truth.
Evelyn shoots Noah, wounding him, and tries to escape, but the cops shoot her dead. Noah manages to take his daughter/granddaughter away from the scene, and Jake is left in a state of confusion, wondering what went wrong.
You and us both, Jake.