Columbo: Murder, Smoke and Shadows

TV Movie
1989
TV-PG
1h 38m

IMDb RATING

7.3/10

2.4K

YOUR RATING

Columbo: Murder, Smoke and Shadows (1989)

Cop Drama Police Procedural Crime Drama Mystery

An egocentric wunderkind director, Alex Bradey, murders a childhood friend, Leonard Fisher, who threatens to expose his complicity in the negligent death of Leonard's sister, Jenny, years be... Read allAn egocentric wunderkind director, Alex Bradey, murders a childhood friend, Leonard Fisher, who threatens to expose his complicity in the negligent death of Leonard's sister, Jenny, years before Bradey found fame and success.An egocentric wunderkind director, Alex Bradey, murders a childhood friend, Leonard Fisher, who threatens to expose his complicity in the negligent death of Leonard's sister, Jenny, years before Bradey found fame and success.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

7.3/10

2.4K

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Trivia
Rare for a later Columbo episode, Falk appears briefly without his trademark Raincoat, using it to test a theory about how the murderer moved the body.

Goofs
Columbo spots a couple of ice cream sodas left on the counter in Alex Bradey's office, known as his "boys' club". One glass is almost full, and the other about half-full. Not only can the viewer see this, but Columbo comments on it at length, theorizing with uncanny accuracy how the full and the half-full glasses show what happened earlier, when the victim (Fisher) was visiting Bradey's office. The moment Columbo leaves, Bradey rushes to the soda glasses to destroy the evidence. Inexplicably, both glasses are now nearly empty.

Quotes
Columbo: [referring to the water bed] You know, I've never tried one of these. My wife, that's Mrs. Columbo, she tried to get me interested.
Alex Bradey: [after Columbo lies on the bed] Well, how do you like it?
Columbo: Well, to tell you the truth, sir, it feels all swimmy. Makes me wonder what Mrs. Columbo had in mind.

Connections
Featured in JFK to 9/11: Everything Is a Rich Man's Trick (2014)

User reviews43

Review

Featured review

8/10

Well enough done for Columbo fanatics but still not reflective of the quality of the original series

One of the best of the "new" Columbo adventures, which sees him cross swords with a relentlessly cocky and arrogant movie director who murders an old friend who discovers the truth behind his sister's death on a movie set some years before.

Fisher Stevens is undeniably excellent as the cold-heartedly manipulative and scheming Alex Brady whose empire is gradually eroded by the emergence of progressively incriminating circumstantial evidence. His increasingly antagonistic scenes with Falk are the main asset of the story and almost dispel the theory that you can't recapture the style and enjoyment of an original series by re-making it.

As is customary Columbo is "lucky" with some of his evidence (the shoe heel which gives Columbo the location of the murder being a case in point); but one can argue that his unwavering thoroughness entitles him to find the most unlikely things.

Another good thing in this adventure is that Columbo doesn't really have enough concrete evidence until the very end and even then the murderer is dismissive of Columbo's perceptions of proof.

One negative observation is Falk's portrayal of Columbo - it is decidedly more matter-of-fact nowadays, which is probably attributable to his age and the time-lapse between the old series and new series.