Scorpio

A jaundiced look at the CIA, bolstered by a terrific cast. [14 Sep 1986, p.6]

When you wind a plot up as tightly as this one, it runs along nicely for awhile, but then the last half-hour has to be spent simply resolving everything.

The aphoristic style, combined with Winner's unwavering visual instinct for crushingly obvious detail, helps to push Scorpio out of low dullness into vertiginous absurdity.

Despite its anachronistic emulation of mid-1960s cynical spy mellers, Scorpio might have been an acceptable action programmer if its narrative were clearer, its dialog less 'cultured' and its visuals more straightforward.

Winner directs with typically crass abandon, wasting a solid performance from Lancaster and a story that a director like Jean-Pierre Melville might have made something of.

Scorpio exists merely as a succession of stylistic flourishes without feeling, representative of the emptiest, most uninteresting kind of cinema. [24 May 1973, p.83]