Finally caught a title beforehand, as promised.
And The Ruthless Reporter, what a fitting title it is. The murderer was
such a horrible person. Two murders, completely without conscience or shame.
I’m not even totally clear on why the first guy
was killed. He was an all-around creep, but was he really killed just so those
pictures could be retrieved? The forced affair was already over, so it couldn’t
have been that he was killed to stop that. And ugh, to think the poor defendant
was deliberately framed because her job was wanted by the murderer! . . . In
fact, maybe that was why the guy was murdered, just in order to frame the girl
for it and free up the job. Oh gosh.
I wasn’t really quite satisfied with the
cameraman also being charged with first degree murder, though. It sounded like
he didn’t know either murder was going to happen. He thought that the fake
meeting with the first guy was just to stall while the pictures were being
retrieved. Then, after he found out the truth, he thought the explosives were
just being set up to scare the second guy into silence. It seems to me that the
most he should be charged with would be an accessory after the fact.
The plot was very intense and exciting, but I was
rather let-down by the Los Angeles scenes. I was thrilled we were going to go
back to the “real” Perry setting, but you could tell those scenes were
just filmed in Denver too. And Ken chasing the fleeing suspect. . . . I was
thinking, “Didn’t we just do this in last night’s movie? Déjà vu.” And was it Ken
and not the suspect who actually shoved that poor guy to the ground?
At least the suspect survived that electrocution
and fall. I was worried we were doing another cliché “suspect dies at the
conclusion of long-winded chase scene”. It was very satisfying when he walked
into court, hurt but alive, right after the real murderer told lies about him.
Another thing I wasn’t very happy about regarding
this film was that you could definitely tell it was one of the later ventures.
There was a lot more innuendo and swearing than in most of the earlier films.
Of course, affairs and even naughty pictures are things that turned up in the
original series too; I just feel that they were talked about more discreetly in
the original series. I realize that even what this movie did is mild compared
to things these days, but it’s still more than what I like to hear.
The best thing about this film, for me, was
seeing Jerry Orbach again. And once again, he wasn’t the bad guy! Yay!
I also liked the defendant quite a bit this time.
I just wish we could have seen her cat!
Actually, I quite liked most of the
guest-starring characters. I was always kind of iffy on Cassie, though, and
with the movie’s final revelations, I can see why.
Poor Ken, being so nuts about her. It was
certainly amusing when Della said she’d written down the last twelve times he
said he was in love, though. Heh! And poor guy, in the epilogue he wants to
hurry and snap off the television and not hear the news story about the arrest.
Overall,
it’s not an installment I’d readily watch again any time soon, except to see
Jerry. As a general rule, I prefer the older movies over the newer ones. (And I
prefer the television series over any, but the movies are still fun to check
out.)
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