James Goldstone tried really hard to make a good movie but I think he was limited by his talent and also the restrictions of Universal - it has particularly ugly 70s art direction and costume design (those checked pants).
At heart this feels like an episode of Columbo with some spectacle (rollercoaster scenes, crowds at themed parks) - we know who did it straight away the film becomes about catching the killer. There's cat and mouse phone calls between hero George Segal and bomber Timothy Bottoms.
I liked Bottoms and Segal, though I wished Elliot Gould had been in either role. There's a lot of craggy faced actors like Henry Fonda, Harry Guardino, and Richard Widmark, and newer faces like Steve Guttenberg, Helen Hunt, and Craig Wasson. There's a fun cameo from a non famous band, decent extras. a solid rollercoaster explosion at the top, so much smoking (like, everyone's smoking, there's a plot about Segal trying to give up smoking - smokes killed one of the writers IRL), bits of business for Segal to play that was presumably actor bait (girlfriend Susan Strasberg, divorced from wife, trying to give up smoking, snappy attitude, scenes with Fonda and Widmark), lots of scenes of phone calls (dilligent plotting but I felt half an hour could've been cut out just with scene trims).
I wish the police had tried other ways of tracking Bottoms (eg interviewing people who saw him when he pretended to be giving room service... not hard to do, would've taken time, provided a sketch to give Segal).
But this was a pretty good movie. The acting was solid, it was smart, there was suspense (I expected the bomb crew to be blown away), the villain isn't dumb.
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