Buddy Buddy

A trial is under way and a witness is to testify in a mafia case. Trabucco is a contract killer; to do the job he takes a room in the hotel across the street. The courthouse door is visible from the window. Everything is ready. Then someone takes the next room. Victor Clooney has been left by his wife and has decided to kill himself. But he cannot manage it. He makes noise, calls the hotel staff, shouts in the corridor. Trabucco tries to keep him quiet. Every intervention makes it larger and in the end the man attaches himself to him. Billy Wilder directs; he wrote the screenplay with I.A.L. Diamond. Walter Matthau plays Trabucco and Jack Lemmon plays Victor; Paula Prentiss and Klaus Kinski are in the cast. It is an American production, made in 1981. The film is a remake of the 1973 French film L'emmerdeur. It was Billy Wilder's last film. Lemmon and Matthau had played together before; the pair appeared in many films. The narrative rests on one location and most of it happens in a hotel corridor. The matter it treats is the impossibility of a plan; all the killer's preparation collapses through the presence of one man. The character Klaus Kinski plays runs a clinic and the strangest section is there. The film drew little interest on release and was found weak by critics. Its limit is the writing; the jokes repeat, the pace is low, and the ending rushed. Who it is for: viewers who like Wilder's cinema and the pairing of Lemmon and Matthau. Who it is not for: it is weak, repetitive, and the ending easy.