I thought George Wendt was good in the role. He seems like a narcissist to me and had no fear(at least at first) of the mob.
I thought it was odd the bicycle tracks and footprints of the ahem.... rather heavy character of Graham were completely ignored at the scene of the crime.
Rod Steiger as Fortelli seems a very bad cliche of a mobster.
Columbo was great in the clues that he did notice such as the ashes and the timetable of Bruno's call.
The ending was shall we say terrible. Instead of Columbo cleverly outwitting the murderer and getting them to implicate themself in a mistake, here he uses frankly, illegal tactics. I believe it's called "under duress." Now it appears some reviewers were ok with this, but it seemed like lazy writing to me. The writer was incapable of having that "oh snap" moment with clever writing for Columbo to outwit the killer. In other words, the writer had no way out other than this. Or no imagination at the very least.
Why are we supposed to be ok with a murderer, Fortelli, who probably killed plenty of people in his lifetime, helping Columbo to catch a murderer that killed 2 people? The nice guy mobster thing is a joke. Mobsters are NOT nice people. Fortelli has probably has a trail of hundreds of unsolved murders in his tracks.
Anyway a rather weak ending. Love Columbo, but this was not worthy of him as a character or to the series. 5/10.
I thought it was odd the bicycle tracks and footprints of the ahem.... rather heavy character of Graham were completely ignored at the scene of the crime.
Rod Steiger as Fortelli seems a very bad cliche of a mobster.
Columbo was great in the clues that he did notice such as the ashes and the timetable of Bruno's call.
The ending was shall we say terrible. Instead of Columbo cleverly outwitting the murderer and getting them to implicate themself in a mistake, here he uses frankly, illegal tactics. I believe it's called "under duress." Now it appears some reviewers were ok with this, but it seemed like lazy writing to me. The writer was incapable of having that "oh snap" moment with clever writing for Columbo to outwit the killer. In other words, the writer had no way out other than this. Or no imagination at the very least.
Why are we supposed to be ok with a murderer, Fortelli, who probably killed plenty of people in his lifetime, helping Columbo to catch a murderer that killed 2 people? The nice guy mobster thing is a joke. Mobsters are NOT nice people. Fortelli has probably has a trail of hundreds of unsolved murders in his tracks.
Anyway a rather weak ending. Love Columbo, but this was not worthy of him as a character or to the series. 5/10.