I love Jack Nicholson. Period. Faye Dunaway is likewise a star in her own right, but Nicholson's charisma carries this movie completely (as it does in so many of his other projects such as
The Shinning). I find the tone of this film very interesting in comparison to Polanski's other projects such as
The Pianist and
Macbeth, however one notices the common thread of focusing on the personal struggles of the protagonist (anti-hero in the case of Macbeth), especially given the situation of the hero is based so much on the environment and events out of his control (the Holocaust, the witches prophesy, being hired into a burgeoning political-social scandal).
