VEILED THREATS by Phil Mershon
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SCORPIO
Directed by Michael Winner
Written by David W. Rintels and Gerald Wilson
Starring Burt Lancaster and Alain Delon
​Released in 1973
Picture
What with a new James Bond film out of the can and into the streets this week, it feels altogether appropriate that we kick down the doors and out the jams with a terrific little spy-assassination thriller called Scorpio (1973). There's a definite cold war aroma to this movie, so the right wing contingent will groove on it. There is also an even stronger philosophic enlightenment flavor here, though, one that will elevate the spirits of the more progressive elements of the audience. Plus it's just plain fun.
    Burt Lancaster is Cross, an assassin in the employ of the Central Intelligence Agency. His job is to knock off world leaders whose aims run contrary to those of the current administration. Alain Delon is Scorpio, a French assassin who clearly admires and respects Cross. He also respects his own freedom and personal power, so when McLeod, one of the bosses at the CIA, has Scorpio arrested on a trumped up heroin possession charge, the Frenchman decides to play the hand he's dealt.
We end up sort of liking both these guys because of their smarts, their instincts and of course their friendship with one another. And friendship is a huge theme in this movie, as well as a device. Probably the most interesting support character is the Soviet spy Zharkov, played--no, inhabited--by Paul Scofield. There's a scene where Cross--the Russian's friend and nemesis--is sitting around a safehouse discussing communism. "I am a communist," Zharkov tells Cross.
    "Then you're an idiot," Cross retorts. "How can you be a communist after the [Stalin era] purges and trials?"
    Then Zharkov nails it. "I watched poor men who embraced the party, who were true communists, pulling plows like mules in forced labor camps. I was there too. It did not change the basic understanding of the nature of man. This is about ideas. No injustice can defeat that."
    So when I said earlier that friendship is a device in this movie, that's what I'm talking about. Director Michael Winner and screenwriter David Rintels used the love-hate relationship between Cross and everyone else to get the viewer to feel and--as a consequence--to think. The movie doesn't try to persuade you of the propriety of one world view over another. It does, however, pretty accurately offer up what the alternatives are, something you'll never see in a typically amoral Bond movie. 
   There's a segment between Cross and an old friend he rescued from the Nazi concentration camps year earlier. Cross needs a message delivered to his wife. The friend says sure, I'll do it. I owe you. Cross says, well, now, this might be kind of dangerous. The friend says it was dangerous when Cross took out the field marshalls back in WWII but that didn't stop him. So we really get a sense that behind all the cynicism of killing for money in the national interest that Cross has some principles lurking and even manifesting. Even Scorpio, cold as he is, refuses to take the contract on Cross until he learns the reason for the assignment. McLeod tells him Cross is a double agent, selling out to the commies. No way in fuck, Scorpio replies. He's just not that kind of guy. Sure he is, says the spymaster. Besides, we'll lock you up for the heroin. Tell you what, says Scorpio. You give me Cross's job and we've got a deal. There's a profound difference between Cross and Scorpio. It's a difference not only of morality but of humanity. 
    So in the final analysis, Scorpio is that rarest of things in the spy movie genre: it transcends the genre itself, despite some highly realistic chase and shoot-up scenes, by exploring the very human nature of the principal players here. It's also unfortunately somewhat careless with the female characters, using them as more than scenery but not much more. How exciting it would have been to have had a Laura Flanders journalist type character in the process of exposing the government's complicity in the assassination of foreign leaders and thereby adding to the internal pressure on both killers to either make the escape or get the job done. Well, that's what we would see if the movie were made today, if it weren't perverted into some type of Broccoli and Saltzman gadget festival. 
    So skip the Daniel Craig nonsense, order up the queue and lean toward the screen, Gunga Din. This picture is for you. 

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  • Home
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  • The Deluge
    • Veiled Threats >
      • 1939-1945
      • 1946-1963
      • 1964-1975
      • 1976-1985
      • Born Losers
      • Don't Look Back
      • Bonnie and Clyde
      • Cool Hand Luke
      • The Graduate
      • Up Tight!
      • Cycle Savages
      • Wild in the Streets
      • Never a Dull Moment
      • Yellow Submarine
      • Night of the Living Dead
      • Faces
      • The Love Bug
      • Midnight Cowboy
      • Easy Rider
      • Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
      • Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
      • They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
      • The Magic Christian
      • Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
      • The Landlord
      • The Ballad of Cable Hogue
      • Getting Straight
      • The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
      • Five Easy Pieces
      • Godard in America
      • Gimme Shelter
      • Little Big Man
      • The Boys in the Band
      • Joe
      • The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
      • The Big Boss
      • There's a Girl in my Soup
      • The Liberation of L B Jones
      • Klute
      • The French Connection
      • Willie Dynamite
      • Helter Skelter
      • King: A Filmed Record
      • Get Carter
      • Harold and Maude
      • Panic in Needle Park
      • Across 110th Street
      • And Soon the Darkness
      • Deliverance
      • Rolling Thunder
      • Super Fly
      • Busting
      • The Ruling Class
      • The Harder They Come
      • Day of the Jackal
      • Play Misty For Me
      • The Jezebels
      • Sacco & Vanzetti
      • Badlands
      • Cold Turkey
      • Soldier Blue
      • American Graffiti
      • The Falcon and the Snowman
      • Watership Down
      • Scarecrow
      • Walking Tall
      • Frances
      • The Coca-Cola Kid
      • Bob Roberts
      • Bad Company
      • We Are Marshall
      • Patton
      • The Natural
      • The Crossing Guard
      • Reds
      • The Spook Who Sat by the Door
      • Mud
      • Who is Harry Nilsson
      • Ornette: Made in America
      • Six Degrees of Separation
      • This Film is Not Yet Rated
      • Incident at Oglala
      • That Championship Season
      • The Pope of Greenwich Village
      • Little Murders
      • Assault on Precinct 13
      • Capote
      • Inglourious Basterds
      • The Friends of Eddie Coyle
      • Scorpio
      • The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
      • A New Leaf
      • Seven Psychopaths
      • The Last House on the Left
      • The Deer Hunter
      • Let the Right One In
      • Colour Me Kubrick
      • A Time to Kill
      • A Scanner Darkly
      • Salem's Lot
      • Roman Polanksi: Wanted and Desired
      • The Seven-Ups
      • The Contender
      • Hoffa
      • The Pledge
      • American: The Bill Hicks Story
      • Donnie Brasco
      • Bugsy
      • Milk
      • Reservoir Dogs
      • Glengarry Glen Ross
      • V for Vendetta
      • Trumbo
      • Two in the Wave
      • South of the Border
      • Into the Abyss
      • God Bless America
  • Before the Deluge
    • The Bicycle Thief
    • Judgment at Nuremberg
    • Five Minutes to Live
    • The Manchurian Candidate
    • Hud
    • Pressure Point
    • Blow Up
    • Requiem for a Heavyweight
    • Hurry Sundown
  • Human Flood
    • Jean-Luc Godard >
      • Breathless
      • Masculine Feminine
      • Film Socialisme
    • Brian De Palma >
      • Sisters
      • The Fury
    • Stanley Kubrick >
      • Lolita
      • 2001: A Space Odyssey
      • A Clockwork Orange
      • The Shining
      • Full Metal Jacket
    • Francis Coppola >
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      • Apocalypse Now
    • Woody Allen >
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      • Bananas
      • Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But were Afraid to Ask
      • Sleeper
      • Love and Death
      • Annie Hall
      • Interiors
      • Manhattan
      • Stardust Memories
      • Zelig
      • Broadway Danny Rose
      • The Purple Rose of Cairo
      • Hannah and Her Sisters
      • Radio Days
    • Robert Altman >
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      • Brewster McCloud
      • 3 Women
      • Nashville
      • The Gingerbread Man
      • Ready to Wear
      • Gosford Park
      • The Player
    • Luis Bunuel >
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      • Cul-de-Sac
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      • MacBeth
      • The Tenant
    • Martin Scorsese >
      • Boxcar Bertha
    • Steven Spielberg >
      • Duel
    • Oliver Stone >
      • Talk Radio
    • Orson Welles >
      • F For Fake
    • Akira Kurosawa >
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    • Francois Truffaut >
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      • Jules and Jim
      • Bed and Board
    • Jean Renoir
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    • Charlie Chaplin
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    • Alain Resnais
    • Eric Rohmer >
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    • Ida Lupino
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    • Penny Marshall
    • Costa-Gavras >
      • The Confession
      • Missing
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      • Shadow of a Doubt
      • The Birds
      • I Confess
      • Dial M for Murder
      • Rear Window
      • To Catch a Thief
      • The Wrong Man
      • Suspicion
      • Saboteur
      • Lifeboat
      • Notorious
      • Rope
      • North by Northwest
      • Psycho
      • The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
  • No Particular Place to Go
  • The Pits
    • The Big Chill
    • W. C. Fields and Me
    • Zabriskie Point
    • Eat The Document
    • Hitler: The Last Ten Days
    • A Boy and His Dog
    • A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
    • The Executioner's Song
    • The Visitors
    • Paul McCartney Really is Dead
    • Going Places
    • Pi
    • Erik the Viking
    • Sometimes They Come Back
    • Thinner
    • Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
    • A Bullet for Pretty Boy
  • Links