16. Jake Gittes
played by Jack Nicholson in Chinatown
Jake Gittes runs a nice, tidy little detective business. He sniffs out cheaters and exposes them. But, when Jake’s business lands him in the middle of a high profile murder, he begins to hear echoes of a life he left behind; a life of corruption and violence. The case leads him exactly where he does not want to go: face-to-face with the moral wasteland of his past in Chinatown.