Effetti molto speciali

I liked this installment better than the first movie from '89 where the snobby villain was rather dull. At least here the villain, although a tad young, had some personality. I liked to watch his building frustration as Columbo tightened the noose. All in all, a better effort all around. I think i am figuring out why the original columbos were just better. Made in the '70s they had a certain style and simplicity thats maybe lacking in the newer films.....the newer versions try to do too much. Everything is a bit cheesier, even the music. Funny but the "newer" episodes seem more dated to me than the older stuff. And i am, so far, missing the big name villains. I am hoping the episode with Faye Dunaway will rectify this. However, as always, i enjoy Peter Falk. He remains as good as ever. Best moment: columbo shows his incredible deduction skills to the viewer and the villain during an early scene where Columbo can tell so much from 2 left over ice cream sodas. It's right up there with vintage Columbo. Secondly, the scene where Columbo literally hangs in the air scanning a movie set. His dislike of heights is known from vintage episodes.

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

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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Fisher Stevens stars as a successful young Hollywood director of blockbuster films named Alex Bradey who feels compelled to kill an old friend by electric shock who threatened to reveal an old dark secret from his past where he covered up his negligence in the death of an actress in one of his home movies. Lt. Columbo(Peter Falk) investigates the death that leads right to Bradey, but of course the egotistical yet overconfident director(obviously an amalgam of Steven Spielberg and John Landis) underestimates the good Lt. to his peril... Entertaining episode will appeal especially to film buffs, though the climax does seem a bit too theatrical.

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.