Unexpected creative duel with Ryazanov Investigator Znamensky is a member of the commission inspecting the vegetable base. Operative Tomin at the same time gets into history with a fight with dealers in one of the kolkhoz markets. But the criminals strike back and now Znamensky and Tomin have to justify the charge of bribery.
Strictly speaking, this film from the series about connoisseurs is too naive, like they themselves, especially Znamensky. Although the story with vegetable baza is not at all unique - it is banal for stagnant Soviet reality. And the only sane character is the director of the market performed by Nikolai Skorobogatov. He at least explains the inconsistency of the trade, while remaining an honest person. Well, one of the dialogues (the first) Znamensky and Chugunnikova reveals the psychology of base workers in such conditions, but ... it was impossible to leave such a conversation unfinished. After all, it is impossible to unfold the picture to the systemic shortcomings of storing products in Soviet warehouses - it is easier to blame individual shortcomings. . .
Therefore, the rest of the film is a zealous denunciation of the plunderers of socialist property, whose psychology is reduced to total and widespread lies - at work and at home. In fact, it is not so much the crime itself that is condemned as duplicity. But, alas, the authors squeeze... For example, Director Chugunnikova's scheme of lies - well, was it really difficult to come up with something simpler and more plausible than the general's origin? And the daughter who survived to the institute, as if she came down from the sky? Does the girl not understand the danger of discrediting her mother? Still demanding the truth? Well, well done, of course, but a kind of justified plot - a personal interest in the director's remorse - is initially not plausible, because there is no choice between life and morality. If the girl understood the consequences and still demanded the truth, then there are no questions - the drama is clear. But he doesn't. . .
Warehousekeeper Vaskin seems to be a characteristic fall from teachers to thieves and even understandable nostalgia for youth and honesty. But the moral decay and character of such a person had to be a little different - there must remain at least some habits of the intellectual, albeit from a teaching school, and not an institute. But they're not.
And so in everything - it seems that reality slips into the whole story, but the police series prefers to make it of color black and white, thickening these two colors. So it looks somehow too correct, and most importantly - not very convincing. Even the move with Malakhov is too transparent on the part of criminals. . .
So it turns out that, albeit briefly, but much more interestingly, a similar plot unfolded not in a detective story, but in the usual current drama of Eldar Ryazanov’s life in ' Station for Two' and Nonna Mordyukov and Nikita Mikhalkov built not black and white, but colorful figures of speculator-ambalist Andrei and an intermediary between the land and the people of Uncle Misha. And exposed the system. Alas, the Knights were not focused on this. Just opened the curtain... And then they slammed the gate. I'm sorry.