moriarty@fluke.UUCP (Jeff Meyer) (06/21/85)
SCORPION (1984, Netherlands)
Director/Screenwriter: Ben Verbong
Cast: Peter Tulnman, Monique van de Ven, Adrian Brine
_Scorpion_ is one of those films that will almost certainly be
distributed to the film houses in the U.S. specializing in foreign
films. It is a movie of the suspense/thriller genre, and thus
considered marketable to an American audience. By the end of the
film, the question is not whether it will do well with domestic
audiences, the question is, how good of a suspense movie is this?
My opinion would have to be that it is pretty average. The story
dwells upon a poor worker who runs off with a small amount of
embezzled cash and a truck from his boss. He flees to a coastal
town, where he meets a local dance-hall girl with whom he strikes
up a friendship. However, in a few days he is found by his former
boss, who makes a strange offer: for the thief to take a passport
bearing another man's name and moving to America. It is an easy
way out for the thief, but he becomes curious as to who the
passport belongs to, and when he notices an article in the
newspaper saying that a man bearing the name on his passport
died in a car crash, he becomes suspicious, and decides to
investigate. This is the point the picture turns on: the thief trying
to uncover exactly what is going on, aided and abetted by his
girlfriend from the dance hall. It is a well-put together plot, which
avoids becoming too complex, but is not straightforward enough to
be dull. The ending somehow seemed hackneyed to me --
reminded me of film endings following Watergate, very cynical and
depressing.
The cast is variable: the man playing the main character, the thief, works
at his image of "Joe Average" so much that you have a hard time feeling for
him in any capacity, except for the chess piece he is in this game. The
woman he slowly falls in love with has little to do other than look
beautiful (which she does very well); and the assorted villains are nicely
sinister. Photography is very good -- has everyone seen _Blood_Simple_, and
are now trying to imitate the photographic style? -- and the production
values are also good. My conclusion is that for $3 you could do worse, but
remember that this tends to be a generic thriller -- don't expect anything
special out of it.
"When in doubt, tell the truth."
Mark Twain
"When in doubt, book 'em."
Steve McGarret, Five-O
Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc.
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