Economy of Death

....despite the strength of the script, acting and direction for the first 3/4 of the show, things TOTALLY FALL APART during the big climatic scenes near the end. Clearly, the script had very little to offer during its final portion, so we are treated to lots of inane running around (the police squad all GET OUT of their cars....RUN TO the warehouse....RUN AROUND the warehouse....RUN INSIDE the warehouse....RUN BACK to their cars...etc, etc...) which eats up screen time, but really kills the momentum.

Probably the silliest is the 70-year old Sam Jaffe, a bullet in his right arm, relentlessly (probably about 2 MPH) pursuing bad guy Janza through the streets with a gun. Are we seriously to believe that the much younger, stronger Janza can't HIDE somewhere-- in an alley, a doorway, behind parked cars...ANYWHERE??? ..to avoid the fury and bluster of an old guy chasing him around town? Janza, in desperation, actually knocks on a couple of doors for protection, but is turned away. In the meantime, the crazed old duffer with the gun gets closer.....and CLOSER......(!)

What's really GOOD about this episode are the performances by Sam Jaffe and ESPECIALLY Muni Seroff (pictured above) as Zoltan Bognar, an actor whose TV and stage credits are disappointingly sparse, considering his great talent and appeal; he's charming and sincere throughout-- until the final confrontation in the warehouse with Janza , where he really delivers the dramatic goods. I wish he had played more substantial roles like this one.

Also good to see NY's favorite creepy Leonardo Cimino -- whose cadaverous face rivaled that of Reggie Nalder---- in a substantial dramatic scene with Sam Jaffe. He's really good. Also, Janza (the main bad guy) is played by Sandor Szabo, who apparently was a major actor in his native Hungary.

At least this episode serves as an excellent showcase for these (and more) fine actors and actresses, whose talents were rarely seen by the public at large. Too bad about the ending. LR

***SPOILERS*** It's when locksmith Lazslo Lubasu's, Sam Jaffe, wife Maria, Lotte Palfi Andor,found out that the letters that she was getting from her daughter back in Communist Hungary were fake and the money she sent her went to the forger Miklos Konya, Lenny Cimino, her heart broke and had her dropped dead because of it. Lazslo confronting Konya in what he did ended up gunning him down when he went for his gun in a desperate attempt to escape his fate. It was then that Lazslo found evidence that it was successful businessman Gyula Jansa, Sandor Szabo, a pillar in the New York Hungarian community that set him up and about 100 Hungarian refugees escaping from Hungery during the 1956 Hungarian uprising.

In him getting his son free passage out of Hungary it was Jansa who sold out Lazslo and his family as well as the Hungarian freedom fighters by ratting them out, where they were to cross the Hungarian Austrian border, the the Hungarian version of the dreaded KGB who ended up slaughtering them! Now with hate in his heart and revenge on his mind Lazslo is out to get Bognar and waste him if it's the last thing that he does. It's the NYPD's job to keep Lazslo from doing any more killing but being as slippery as an ell in knowing his way around the city's Hungarian community that's no easy task.

With his fellow Hungarians refusing to cooperate with the police Lazslo goes about his task to get the by now scared out of his pants Jansa and give him all that's coming to him. Seeming almost invincible the 70 or so year old Lazslo even survives being shot by Jansa's wife Pauline, Lidia Prochnicka, who just fluffed if off as if it were a bee sting before disarming her and going on his merry to gun down her fleeing husband.

***SPOILERS*** In a shoot out at the O.K Corral like ending Lazslo finally corners the elusive Jansa in a railroad yard and with the police trying to stop any farther bloodshed guns him down in a deadly crossfire, between him Jansa and the police, with Jansa ending up the polluted waters of the Hudson River just were he belonged. As for Lazslo he was both out of bullets as well as blood by then and passed away with a smile on his face knowing that he avenged the death of his wife daughter and family as well as the other 100 or so Hungarians that Jansa, in order to save his son, sold out to the Hungarian Communists.

A truly lousy episode, starring Sam Jaffe, of all people, as a man driven to single-minded vengeance. Supporting cast is uninteresting (for example, Lilia Skala is wasted in a nothing role, a couple of years before her "Lilies of the Field" triumph), and Burke is a day late and a dollar short for a change. The script manages to be both pretentious and stupid, with characters convenently dropping dead at writer Sy Salkowitz's whim.

It's a clunker from start to finish. The endless, "interrupted by a time out for plot exposition" climax of a foot chase is really poor, an idiotic way to wrap things up.