The Fortune Cookie (1966) - film review

CBS cameraman Henry Hinkle is covering a football game at Cleveland Stadium when one of the players, Boom Boom Jackson, runs into him, rendering him unconscious.  Henry is rushed to hospital where one of his first visitors is his brother-in-law, Willie Gingrich, a lawyer with a particular aptitude for extorting money from insurance companies.   Although Henry soon recovers from his accident, Willie is confident that he can win a law suit against the parties involved.  All that Henry has to do is to pretend to have suffered a crippling spinal injury.  At first, Henry is dead against the scheme but he is soon won around when Willie explains that a large settlement will enable him to win back his ex-wife.  Although Henry manages to put up a convincing act, the insurance company is not going to give in without a fight and so hire a private detective to spy on the supposed invalid.  Henry’s resolve slowly begins to crack when he realises the effect that his faked paralysis is having on Boom Boom, whose fortunes take a sudden turn for the worse...

Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau’s legendary on-screen partnership got off to a cracking start in this typically caustic comedy from Billy Wilder.  The two stars would appear together a few years later in The Odd Couple (1968) and then a further seven movies, forming one of Hollywood’s most memorable and best-loved double acts.  By this stage, Lemmon had already appeared in three Billy Wilder films, including the all-time classics Some Like It Hot (1959) and The Apartment (1960), although here he is out-staged and outclassed by Matthau, who deservedly won an Oscar for his ebullient portrayal of a cynical money-grubbing lawyer.

The Fortune Cookie is an old-fashioned morality tale at heart and probably has even greater relevance today in our litigation-mad, blame-everyone-else culture.  Wilder appears to have more difficulty sustaining the pace and energy here than in his previous comedies and things do get a little schmaltzy towards the end, particularly when some soppy anti-racist sentiment enters the picture.  This is compensated for by the genuine warmth Jack Lemmon and Ron Rich bring to their final scenes together, providing a suitably downbeat but optimistic ending.  This  may not be Wilder’s best film, but it makes an effective satire, all the more enjoyable for its crisp acid-tinged dialogue and the arresting contributions from the two superlative lead performers.

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