Word: scorpio
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...SCORPIO...
...Scorpio does little else, it proves that Lancaster, after all this time, still has an enviable store of vigor. At 59, he is a little paunchier, a little slower, and he breathes harder on the run; but he can still haul himself up a scaffolding with the best. Director Winner sends him pounding around a construction site in Vienna, pursued by Alain Delon, who means to kill him on behalf of the CIA. Lancaster leads Delon and an accomplice a hectic chase through tunnels, up steel girders, across gangways. Watching Lancaster leave the youngsters in the dust gives an almost...
Lancaster, always good at playing brashness, was never an actor to show much warmth. His role in Scorpio-a double agent on the run from both East and West-gives him a chance to project the kind of dead-eyed savagery he has nearly patented as his own. He has the proper cunning and just the right kind of careful menace and restrained violence. He is not like a Graham Greene operative, haunted by guilt, shrouded in original sin. John Le Carre's world of moral acrostics would be alien to him. Lancaster plays a thug, an opportunist...
...archetypes, it occasionally threatens to parody the genre it is honoring. Harry is so cool, so invincible, he almost flattens into one-dimensionality. Irrelevant references to his deceased wife and some cute banter about his nickname fail to fill out his personality. And because of Dirty Harry's oversimplification, Scorpio's vicious insanity (brilliantly conveyed by Andy Robinson) becomes a mere caricature of evil-an archenemy of Batman playing for keeps...
...carnage is lovingly detailed: a swimming pool filling with blood, machine-gun fire splattering the city, knifings, beatings, kidnappings, and more. Much more. Siegel excels at wrapping his audience in horror. The bank robbery is a virtual ballet of gunfire and blood. The methodical irrationality of Scorpio's sniping blasts away one's logical defenses; the killer evokes instinctive terror...