Memorable, crazy movie

Captivating movie !

Awesome Movie

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Harry Hinkle (Jack Lemmon) is a sideline camera man at a Cleveland Browns football game. He gets run over by one of the players. He is generally fine recovering in a hospital. His sleazy brother-in-law Willie Gingrich (Walter Matthau) arrives with a scheme to sue for a big pay day. Harry agrees to fake his injuries. Harry still pines for his ex-wife and Willie's sister Sandy. Football player Luther "Boom Boom" Jackson feels guilty for putting Harry in a wheelchair.This is the initial pairing of Lemmon and Matthau. With Billy Wilder's sharp words, this should be epic. While it has a few laughs, this is not the cinematic icon like their other collaborations that most would remember. The two guys have a nice chemistry. It's not fully taken advantage yet but these guys are showing some potential. They just need more screen time together. Lemmon spends more time with the football player.

Marked as the first pairing of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, who subsequently worked together on 11 future additional films, the Fortune Cookie directed by Billy Wilder, was a tasty delight. The movie tells the story of a crooked lawyer, Willie Gingrich (Walter Matthau) whom persuades his brother-in-law, a CBS sport-cameraman Harry Hinkle (Jack Lemmon), to feign a serious injury, so that, both can receive a huge indemnity from the insurance company. Without spoiling the movie, too much, I have to say, while it's not the funniest movie, in Billy Wilder's filmography, but it's by far, my favorite John Lemmon & Billy Wilder film, they shot together. Jack Lemmon was near-perfect in this film. He wasn't so over the top, here, like his previous roles. The way, he acted like he was injury, honestly made me believe, he was indeed stuck being wheelchair bound, at times. Walter Matthau as Willie Gingrich, was just as hysterical and wonderful as Jack Lemmon. Matthau won his Academy Award Oscar for Best Supporting Actor playing bottom feeding lawyer, Whiplash Willie from this film. I think he deserve that win, big time. Walter Matthau really put, everything in this role. Mad props, go to the fact that Walter return to the role, after suffering a heart attack. He had slimmed from 190 to 160 pounds by the time filming was completed, and had to wear a heavy black coat to conceal the weight loss. That's shows, how driven, he was, to this film. Despite, his character being a shyster, Walter had enough charm with his attitude, to make Whiplash Willie, a bit likable. The chemistry between Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau is so far, the best thing in the film. They bonded so well. So, it was no surprise that they would remain friends the rest of their lives. The snobbish Lemmon and the bad-tempered Matthau provided the perfect counter-point. The supporting characters were pretty good, as well. While, his character was a bit underdeveloped, I kinda Ron Rich as Luther "Boom-Boom" Jackson. A lot of people, criticize his character as a man-servant, but I don't think it, that way. He felt guilty, for 'injuring', Harry, so he just wanted to help. He had that All-American Boy-Scout charm. It hasn't nothing to do with his race. One of my favorite characters in this film has to be Cliff Osmond as Chester Purkey, Private Eye Insurance investigator. I love the whole cat-and-mouse game starts between him and Gingrich. The only character that I didn't like, was Judi West as Sadie Hinkle. It wasn't, because her character was one-dimensional selfish or the actress portraying her didn't do a good job. It was, because how late, in the film, she appeared. For somebody, that supposed help, the good nature, Harry to go along with the scheme. She really doesn't get, much screen-time for odd reason. While, this movie has some of Billy Wilder's most famous trademarks, such as feature characters who try to change their identity, women often represented as dangerous, lust, greed and manipulative, and last often cynical but humorous, sweet and sour dialogue. There was one thing that this movie was missing from the great Hollywood provocateur. It didn't have that great narration. With no narration, the movie moves like a book, instead of a film; from chapter title screen to chapter title screen. While, this seem like nitpicking. The way, the film does its story-telling, makes it seem like the source was taken from a famous book, than an original work. It was a bit weird. This movie might be one of the very earlier films, that I can remember, that had product placement. Like Wilder's previous film, 1961's One, Two, Three, which feature the Coca-Cola company; this film has the National Football League (NFL), and Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) intertwining with the script; giving the movie, a sense of realism. While the film does somewhat make those companies look bad, due to how stubborn, their insurance companies were; it does give some insight, of what these companies were going, through at, the time. The first Super Bowl was only a year, away after all. I like how Billy Wilder shot the opening sequence during an actual Vikings-Browns game on October 31, 1965. Surprising, this might be the only footage of that game, as networks at the time, commonly wiped broadcast sports tapes at the time, and recorded over with different content to save cost. So, if you ever, like to see an old school football game, before the 1970 merger. Between the NFL and AFL (American Football League). Here is your chance! Even if you're not a football fan, this is a great film. The movie had a great story that influence other works, such as 1990's TV Shows like Simpsons and Wing's episodes, where they tackle a similar premise. Overall: The fortune cookie is worth a bite, into. It is poignant as it is funny, and I highly recommend it to any generation.

Jack Lemmon is Harry Hinkle, a CBS cameraman, who gets injured when football player Luther "Boom Boom" Jackson (Ron Rich) runs into him.Walter Matthau is Harry's lawyer brother-in-law "Whiplash Willie" Gingrich, who realizes they could make some dough with the minor injury by making it look like a bigger injury.In The Fortune Cookie (1966) we have the power trio Billy Wilder, Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau.You just can't go wrong with these three.This movie started the partnership of Lemmon and Matthau, who appeared in 10 films together.And the writer, alongside the director, is I.A.L. Diamond, who wrote 12 films together with Wilder.Other performances in this movie include Judi West, who's fantastic as Sandy.Ron Rich is superb as "Boom Boom".Cliff Osmond, who appeared in four Billy Wilder films, is great as Purkey.Marge Redmond is very good as Charlotte Gingrich.Sig Ruman, who passed away the next year, is terrific as Professor Winterhalter.One of the funniest scenes is with him, where he makes the diagnosis: fake.There are many other funny scenes in this movie.It is also a very intelligent movie of a topic that has some reality basis.There are those sleazebag lawyers out there working on their schemes.Of course those sleazebag lawyers aren't quite like Walter Matthau, who makes the character somewhat likable.Lemmon's character is also very interesting, who is forced to deal with moral issues.It's a real delight to watch Jack and Walter together for the first time.

Like the best Wilder films, The Fortune Cookie is full of interesting characters who aren't a major part of the story being told. Wilder and his co-writer IAL Diamond didn't just use minor characters or passers-by to further the plot, they made it clear that these people had other things going on, that they weren't just standing around waiting for someone else to come by so they could say one thing. A perfect example of this is a scene near the end where Harry Hinkle (Jack Lemmon in one of his many collaborations with Wilder) interrupts a couple of laundry men betting on whether random team jerseys will have even or odd numbers on them. This is exactly the kind of thing men with a boring job like that would do, and we even see that one of the guys is slyly trying to increase the odds in his favor-this also ties the short scene in with the rest of the film thematically.The entire film is about people who try to manipulate their situations to come out ahead. First there's Hinkle's ambulance chasing brother-in-law Willie Gingrich (Walter Matthau in an Oscar winning performance) who wants him to pretend to be more seriously injured than he really is to get a big insurance settlement. Hinkle isn't a greedy man, though, and he only gives in to Gingrich's scheme because he thinks it means a chance of winning back the wife who already left him for a chance to come out ahead in show business.Gingrich's attempts to keep Hinkle dishonest are constantly threatened by the presence of Boom Boom Jackson, the honest football player who feels terrible about knocking Hinkle down at a game and landing him in a hospital bed. The film is really about Hinkle's moral dilemma: should he choose to play it fair like Boom Boom or should he just try to get ahead like his ex-wife and Gingrich? Regardless of the eventual outcome of the film, it's always fun (and often hilarious) watching the schemes of the quintessential dishonest lawyer as they come and go. The Fortune Cookie may be late period Wilder but it's just as deserving of it's classic status as any of his films.