Columbo: Murder, Smoke and Shadows

This Columbo has everything that you'd expect from a good Columbo: great dialogue, a bright murderer who only makes a few tiny mistakes and a wonderful setting (a movie studio) which adds interesting metaphores and storylines. Columbo is getting older, but not worse, and I enjoyed watching this from the beginning to the end.

The movie is directed by James Frawley. His Columbo movies weren't among the fastest going ones but they always were among the more stylish ones. He directed the movies with lots of class and he is among my favorite Columbo movie directors. Throughout his career he directed a total of 6 Columbo movies, evenly divided between the '80's and '70's. The also always had a certain amount of fun written over it, in a quirky kind of way, this movie included. The humor always has been one of the great things about the Columbo-series and James Frawley was a person who always seemed to got it right. This was an entertaining movie in parts but I just did not have as much fun watching it as I do watching other Columbo movies.

In this case the movie its pace isn't a great thing about the movie. It takes a long while for Lt. Columbo to enter the picture, which normally is an indication that the movie itself also isn't going to be among the best the long running Columbo series has to offer. The movie is a lot of talk but not enough action. Not enough is ever happening in this movie and the movie gets stuck in its pace.

Combined with this gets the fact that this movie doesn't feature the best Columbo 'villain'. Fisher Stevens also isn't exactly the best known or most perfect person imaginable to play the part. The movie really features some bad casting and the movie was lacking a good and well known actor playing opposite Peter Falk. None of the '80's Columbo movies feature any big stars opposite Peter Falk in it. They obviously were trying to head into a new direction with the series, after it had stopped in 1978 and got re-launched in 1989. It's a reason why the 'later' Columbo movies mostly aren't as good as the beginning of the series, during the '60's and '70's.

The story has a good concept though, although it's perhaps not as well written or clever as it could had been. It still has a great ending though. The movie is set entirely at the Universal studios. It wasn't the first Columbo movie that got set at the Universial studios though. Universal was of course also the distributor of the Columbo movies, so they had no hard time getting permission to film on the lot.

A slightly below average Columbo movie entry.

6/10

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As I have said many times I love Columbo and always have done. Murder, Smoke and Shadows(wonderful title) is a good episode, but it is not my definition of a truly great episode. It looks great, and is scored very nicely. The script and story are more than acceptable, but I have seen better in other episodes. The script is clever with some nice wit, but it did feel a little too talky, slowing the pace of the story, a component that has been more diverting and perhaps more original before and since but still interesting and entertaining in the clues, the interaction between Falk and Stevens and Columbo deductions. The ending is great. Peter Falk while not as alert as he was pre-1989 is still terrific in perhaps his most iconic role, and while not my favourites of the series by all means Fisher Stevens still delights as a Steven Spielberg-like director character, who is a complete jerk often. Overall, a good episode, but just falls short of greatness. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Alex Bradey is a successful young director having gone from young auteur to studio daringly in a few short pictures. He has retained his sense of fun and childlike pleasure in cinema but all this seems threatened by the reappearance of old friend Leonard Fisher. Fisher has uncovered film that shows that Leonard's sister died during a stunt gone wrong for Alex and not on an accident on the way to the set as Alex had claimed. He plans to expose Alex but the director cannot allow this to happen and kills his friend – dumping the body on the beach with the face and fingerprints removed. A book on Bradey's films dropped near the scene leads Columbo to his door though, looking to solve the strange connections that are bugging him.

As with many TV film series (such as Perry Mason), if you like one or two of them then you'll pretty much like them all. This entry in the Columbo series pretty much follows the usual formula – we know the killer and the "perfect" plan but then watch Columbo follow his hunch and gradually starts to pick holes in the story he is told before eventually finding enough to prove his suspicions. Knowing this ahead of time won't ruin anything for you; it is simply what happens in all the films. With this strict adherence to formula it is usually down to several factors whether or not the Columbo film stands out or if it is just average. Having had my fingers burnt with my first "new" Columbo, I wasn't sure if I should bother going back or should just rewatch the original series from the seventies, but I thought that the formula can't be that hard to pull off and figured that it was worth another pass. With this film I was pleased to find that it went back to basics by having a simple cat/mouse game with Columbo learning stuff in a new world. The connection to Alex is a bit of a stretch at first but the film copes with it well and manages to smoothly move into the formula.

The mystery is not that impressive but the delivery is good nonetheless. The characters are pretty good and the lead two work well together. Falk isn't as good as he was in the 1970's but he is better here than the other new episodes I have seen recently. He doesn't do the comedy as well as he can but he plays well enough with the mystery to make it work. Stevens is nowhere near the class of the 1970's guests but he is pretty enjoyable in a reasonable reference to Spielberg. He isn't that strong but he works well with Falk. The support cast are OK but nothing more than that, so the film wisely leaves them mostly in the background and focuses on the lead two.

Not a great Columbo film then and certainly not up to the standard of the original series' but it is one of the better "new" films. The focus on formula plays to the strength of the series and limits the amount of misjudged clutter that it has. Fans will like it – new viewers should skip back about 15 years to find out what all the fuss was about.

Fisher Stevens (looking eerily like a young Michael Douglas) plays a wunderkind director in Columbo's cross-hairs. The young director kills to cover up something he did or didn't do when he was even younger.

In the original series Columbo played cat-and-mouse with his quarry (Columbo was the cat, though he let the mice think they were). But one never knew when the Lieutenant actually twigged the guilty party. In the revived series he seems to know right off the bat and gives it away. Or perhaps in this episode especially he wants to show these uppity kids a thing or two.

One thing I miss about the old Columbo compared to the new is that in most cases the murderer and the victim were well-known, by their lights. In one earlier-series episode the murderer was Patrick McGoohan and his victim was a pre-comedy Leslie Nielsen. Another episode had James Gregory as the victim and Roddy McDowell as the killer. They were actors who had kicked around movies and TV shows enough to be familiar. And other familiar faces dotted the episodes. The later series shows often were full of unfamiliar people, to me. In this episode the only actor I knew was Steven Hill, team leader on the first season of "Mission: Impossible." The murderer was born two years after I was and the victim was a year older than my big brother. Exciting, that Columbo had moved into my generation, but I preferred the familiar faces. Though a reason is revealed at the end why this episode especially needed unfamiliar faces, the climax reminded me of the young directors like the one in the show, a bit less clever than it thinks it is.

I'm not big on adults (politicians, say) being persecuted for dumb mistakes they made in high school or college when they are really stupid kids. But this director killed as part of a cover-up when what he tried to cover up might have been excused with a slap on the wrist.

The thing is, as one character says in this episode: movies these days are made by children, for children. And since this show aired in 1989 it's only gotten exacerbated. Perhaps it was not just an accident this episode kicks off with a movie studio tour featuring a shark as in "Jaws."

When I was growing up movies were made by middle-aged men: Lean, Hitchcock, Wyler. Then came the Spielberg/Lucas/Coppola revolution and suddenly kids right out of film school took over, who knew nothing of life experiences but only other movies. And since, they've gotten younger and younger, while knowing less and less, in front of and behind the camera and in the theatres. I miss movies made by adults for adults that aren't grim exercises. The Cary Grant/Audrey Hepburn "Charade" is the poster child for "they don't make 'em like this anymore." And don't give me guff about "the bottom line." That was the guiding force in Golden Age movies, too. And silents. Movies always existed to sell popcorn.

Having read extensively about the old studio system I probably know as much about how movies worked in the Golden Age of movie-making, without actual hands-on experience, as anyone working on this project and it was nice seeing a back lot in operation, even if only for show.

The best thing about this episode is the incidental music. It's a wonderful theme. When they lapse into "The Blue Danube," it's a bit clichéd. If they wanted to use a snatch of classical music rather than repeating the first-rate incidental music, Shostakovich's Waltz #2 might have been a better selection. It's a tad clichéd these days but not in 1989.