venerdì 30 novembre 2018

A Nero Wolfe mystery season 1

It's very much like the books. The characters, the feeling, everything's how a Nero Wolfe movie should be. I'm not crazy about Wolfe, honestly, but still, I definitely think that this is the best rendition of Stout's stories, no doubt. Of course Archie narrates the story, like in the books.

Archie-Timothy Hutton
Wolfe-Maury Chaykin
Cramer Bill Smitrovich
2001.

1- The doorbell rang
A rich woman comes to hire Wolfe because she's followed by the FBI and also those close to her, and she wants it to stop. She gives him a check but he says no. She doubles it, and it's a huge amount now so he 'asks Archie's opinion' and of course takes the case. The FBI is spying on her because she sent thousands of copies of the book 'The FBI nobody knows' to people in power.
Archie doesn't want the case because he's scared of the FBI, but Wolfe says "I'm not going to return that check because I'm afraid of a bully!" so they officially take the case and now they know they're being followed too. Archie does a lot of going around while Wolfe stays home, of course.
Inspector Cramer tells Archie that FBI men committed a crime in his town, a murder, but he can't prove it.
The scene with the cook, Wolfe's temper, Archie man-handling things and people, all these things feel very much like out-of-the-book :)
"The FBI is untouchable". They actually try to prove that the FBI did not kill the man and they find out that Mrs Bruner's secretary killed him, but they don't reveal it right away, instead they devise a plan. If they revealed it now, Wolfe's plan would be ruined.
They hire actors to impersonate them so to let the FBI think that they left the house, and that very night two FBI men enter their house; Wolfe, Archie and three men are there with guns threatening to call the police on them. Wolfe keeps their credentials as evidence that the FBI committed illegal actions and then he lets them go. One hour later he receives a phone call. A Mr Wragg comes to see him the next day. Wolfe says that he'll keep the credentials but will file no report on them and do nothing about it if they cease all surveillance on him, on Mrs Bruner and everyone connected. He adds that he'll be able to prove that his men did not kill that man. Mrs Rachel Bruner is happy to hear all this and she says "you're an incredible man" and "is there anything you can't do?" - "yes, madam, there is, I couldn't put sense in a fool's brain, I tried".
Cramer can now arrest the girl, and Wolfe can bark at Wragg and Cramer at the same time :p
One thing bothers me in this story:
She killed him with his own gun and then took it away, leaving the bullet behind, then the three G-men, the FBI men, came and found him dead, they took the bullet and went away...
Cramer suspected them exactly because they took the bullet, he thought that they were cleaning after themselves... so why did they take that bullet? If they hadn't fired, why?
Anyway, the story ends with "the big fish himself all the way from Washington to see you", we can safely assume it's Hoover, but they don't answer. The doorbell rang and they let it.
Lon Cohen-Saul Rubinek
Mrs Bruner-Debra Monk
Sara Dacos-Francie Swift

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