scorpio

Released just one year after the Watergate scandal, Scorpio (1973) fits comfortably into the modern-day espionage mold, one in which secret agents are just as suspicious of their own organizations as they are of the enemy's.

Burt Lancaster stars as agent Cross, a seasoned pro with contacts around the world, specializing in pulling off assassinations that create chaos in all the right places. His understudy is a sophisticated Frenchman, Jean "Scorpio" Laurier (Alain Delon), so named for his specialty: hunting down the hunters when the agency needs to clean house. And Cross has just made the list.

Accused of being a double-agent, Cross leaves his wife (Gayle Hunnicutt) and goes on the run, using his accumulated smarts and sources to stay one step ahead of CIA director McLeod (John Colicos) and his army of ill-prepared government stooges. Eventually it comes down to whether the master has taught his pupil enough to track him down and finish the job.

Directed by Michael Winner immediately following his superbly entertaining The Mechanic, which shared the same general father vs. son concept, his street-level economy of style works even better here. In a genre where gadgets and super villains get most of the attention, Scorpio is almost like the Bourne antidote of its day, with Cross outsmarting pursuers with his wits rather than a laser beam shooting watch. The action scenes are fought in the trenches - tight alleyways and bathroom stalls - and shot with a minimum of Hollywood glamour despite the fact that it stars two international icons.

Lancaster, who was almost 50 at this point, is still completely believable as a thinking man's action hero. And even though the film stumbles in its attempts to create confusion around Cross' moral character (is he or isn't he a traitor?), the character is so compelling we lose interest quickly whenever the camera pans away. As the polished new kid on the block, Delon, despite his European flair, gets unintentionally eclipsed by an actor with so much natural charisma no one else is able to share the screen.

But for all its strengths, Scorpio is lacking some intangibles. The nihilistic finale has a certain Tarantino sense of style, but it's not in keeping with Lancaster's fan base. And the tone waffles between detached cynicism and a maudlin world-weariness, neither of which really match with escapist expectations. But in an era when government corruption is a given and even James Bond has ditched his gadgets, Winner's film has just about been aged to perfection.

Twilight Time's 3000-copy limited edition delivers an awesome hi-def transfer that lives up to their previous releases and includes an isolated score track, trailer, liner notes and group audio commentary from their "staff" historians Lem Dobbs, Julie Kirgo and Nick Redman.