MURDER BY NUMBERS is intriguing enough to make one weep at the missed opportunities and carelessness in the movie's execution. Exceedingly well acted, it is that rare mystery whose solution is almost impossible to guess. There are so many possible suspects that suspense fans will be trying
to unravel the mystery right up to the last minute. When Walter (Wlad Cembrowicz), a wealthy homosexual, disappears, his sister, Leslie (Debra Sandlund), inveigles her former husband, Lee Bolger (Sam Behrens), a lawyer, into investigating the case. Why has realestate broker Patrick Crain (Dick
Sargent), who discovered Walter's body in his bathtub, removed the corpse and hidden it? How does Walter's demise/vanishing act affect his weak-willed brother, George (Stanley Kamei), and his homophobic mother, Pamela (Jayne Meadows)? Are the apparent motives of Walter's heirs just a smokescreen
for the plans of the actual murderer? In order to secure a desperately needed commission, Crain persuades Walter's lover, Richard (Robert Hosea), and his faithful assistant, Lisa (Shari Belafonte), to help him forge a transfer deed on a building. However, Crain doesn't reveal that Walter is dead,
a small detail that would prohibit the transfer of the $30-million deed. Convinced that he was dying of AIDS and determined to prevent his family from contesting his will and cheating Richard out of the inheritance, Walter arranged his financial affairs to prohibit just such a transfer. When
Walter's body is discovered, the police buy a suicide theory, but Bolger suspects that one of Walter's in-laws killed him. Working with David Shelby (Cleavon Little), an ex-con with a talent for breaking and entering, Bolger finds his way through a labyrinth of cross-purposes and hidden motives,
surviving a few blows on the head from Crain in the process. But most of Bolger's theories are blown out of the water when Richard turns up dead and the police declare his death a suicide. Questioning the doctor who treated her late brother, Leslie learns that Walter did not have AIDS. Then why
did he kill himself? If greed was the murder motive, which one of his intimates bumped Walter off? Using a hidden tape recorder, Bolger is able to trick a confession out of the killer, though it isn't quite as easy as it sounds.
Managing skillfully to camouflage the killer's identity, MURDER BY NUMBERS glides smoothly along, full of irony. It excels in delineating colorful characters who exhibit human frailty and idiosyncratic behavior. In the lead role, Behrens is most convincing as the amateur detective who's hung up on
his ex-wife; Little exudes silken confidence as the cynical ex-con; Kamel brings layers of meaning to his portrayal of the sexually confused sibling; and Meadows is icily brilliant in her few scenes as the domineering matron. The smallest parts are cast to perfection.
Why, then, does this movie, which is so full of surprises, fail to satisfy? Why does this sleek suspenser featuring Belafonte's best screen work to date fall short of the mark? Certainly one answer is writer-director Paul Leder's failure to introduce key bits of information at the most effective
moments and thereby to provide a maximum of suspense. Rather than falling neatly into place, the movie works in fits and starts. An out-of-control quality permeates MURDER BY NUMBERS, as if the film's creators had lost a grip on their story. Continuity problems abound, and the editing is slipshod.
When the film cuts to a scene in which the principal characters are suddenly in different outfits, disoriented viewers may have the impression that they are witnessing a flashback. Haven't the makers of this film ever heard of using dissolves to link scenes? It is this kind of sloppiness that
drags a potentially first-rate suspense film down to the level of a moderately enjoyable made-for-TV mystery. With more fluid scene transitions and keener direction, this crisply acted, always-keeps-you-guessing whodunit might even have been a classic. Still, if you lower your expectations a bit,
there's plenty of entertainment to be found in this nifty suspense film. (Violence, sexual situations, profanity.) leave a comment
