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The Most Crucial Game
Russian title: Смертельная развязка · Russian version
The manager of a football club murders the team's owner during a game he is supposed to be watching from the press box, and uses sixty thousand spectators as his alibi. Robert Culp's second and most arrogant Columbo villain.
Editor’s rating — 8 out of 10.
- Number
- 12 of 69
- Aired
- November 5, 1972
- Running time
- 70 min
- Director
- Jeremy Kagan
- Writer
- John T. Dugan
- Music
- Dick DeBenedictis
The case
- The killer
- Robert Culp as Paul Hanlon
- The victim
- Dean Stockwell as Eric Wagner
- Guest cast
- Robert Culp, Dean Jagger, Val Avery, Dean Stockwell, James Gregory, Susan Howard
Columbo is an inverted mystery: the murder opens the film and the killer is known from the first minutes. What you are watching for is how he proves it — see how the character works.
The murder
Paul Hanlon runs the Rockets and has been running the accounts too, quietly and profitably. The club's young owner, Eric Wagner, is a drinker and a disappointment, but he is also about to find out where the money has gone.
The murder is built on timing rather than concealment. During a home game — the one place where Hanlon's presence is documented by television cameras, journalists and a stadium full of witnesses — he slips out, drives to Wagner's house, kills him at the poolside with a heavy object, and returns to the press box before anyone registers the gap.
To cover the missing minutes he uses a recording: a phone call, apparently made from the stadium during the game, in which he speaks to Wagner while the crowd noise proves where he is. The tape does the work his body cannot.
Paul Hanlon runs the Rockets and has been running the accounts too. Eric Wagner, the club's young owner, is a drinker and a disappointment, but he is about to discover where the money went.
The murder is built entirely on timing. During a home game — with television cameras, journalists and a full stadium documenting his presence — Hanlon slips out, drives to Wagner's house, kills him at the poolside and returns to the press box.
The missing minutes are covered by a recording: a phone call apparently made from the stadium, with crowd noise proving where he is. The tape does the work his body cannot.
How Columbo gets him
Hanlon is the most openly contemptuous of Culp's three murderers. He is a busy, important man; the lieutenant is an inconvenience with a notebook. Every scene between them is Hanlon checking his watch and Columbo apologising for existing, and the imbalance is entirely deliberate on both sides.
The lieutenant's suspicion begins with the body's condition and the state of the pool area, which suggest a death earlier than the timeline allows. From there it becomes a question of the recording — the one piece of evidence that places Hanlon somewhere he needs to be at a moment he needs to be there.
Columbo listens to the tape the way he looks at everything: too closely and for too long. What interests him is not the voices but the background, and specifically a sound that belongs to a particular part of a stadium day.
Hanlon is the most openly contemptuous of Culp's three murderers. He is a busy man; the lieutenant is an inconvenience with a notebook. Every scene is Hanlon checking his watch while Columbo apologises for existing.
The body's condition and the state of the pool area suggest a death earlier than the timeline permits, which turns the whole case into a question about the recording.
Columbo listens to the tape the way he looks at everything — too closely and for too long. What interests him is not the voices but the background.
Worth knowing
- Dean Stockwell plays the doomed owner, and Valerie Harper appears in a small role as Hanlon's secretary.
- Culp's three murderers across the series — Brimmer, Hanlon and Bart Keppel — are all professionals whose competence is precisely what undoes them.
- The stadium sequences were filmed at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum during an actual event, which is why the crowd looks like a crowd.
- Dean Stockwell plays the doomed owner and Valerie Harper appears as Hanlon's secretary.
- Stadium sequences were filmed at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum during an actual event.
- Broadcast in November 1972.
Verdict
The weakest of Culp's three, mostly because Hanlon has no interior life beyond impatience, but the alibi is one of the cleverest the series built and the unpicking of it is genuinely satisfying.
It is also the clearest demonstration of the class dynamic: Hanlon treats Columbo as staff for ninety minutes, and the ending is entirely about that mistake.
The weakest of Culp's three, because Hanlon has no interior life beyond impatience — but the alibi is among the cleverest the series built and unpicking it is genuinely satisfying.
It is also the purest demonstration of the class dynamic: ninety minutes of a man treating a detective as staff, and an ending entirely about that mistake.
Familiar faces
Actors who turn up in the series more than once — sometimes in very different parts.
- Val Avery as Ralph Dobbs 4 episodes also in Dead Weight, A Friend in Deed, Identity Crisis
- Robert Culp as Paul Hanlon 4 episodes also in Death Lends a Hand, Double Exposure, Columbo Goes to College
- Richard Stahl as Mr. Fremont 3 episodes also in Lovely But Lethal, Double Exposure
- Cliff Carnell as Plainclothesman 3 episodes also in Blueprint for Murder, Identity Crisis
- Dean Stockwell as Eric Wagner 2 episodes also in Troubled Waters
- James Gregory as David Buckner 2 episodes also in Short Fuse
- Don Keefer as Deputy Coroner 2 episodes also in Death Lends a Hand
Cast data from TMDB, including uncredited bit parts. All the familiar faces →