Director: William Riead
Writer: William Riead
From: Cult Cinema
International anti-terrorism expert Scorpion is brought in to help protect an international terrorist planning to turn state's evidence.
Our film opens in Spain where a man drives a red Porsche to a small bar. Some rowdies try to make trouble, but he makes quick work of them before driving off. He checks in with a contact in Amsterdam and then the US and gets word that he needs to come home.
Cut to a board room where various suits and generals are discussing anti-terror policy. They note that the situation has gotten worse. Instead of attacking random groups of civilians, the terrorists are kidnapping and torturing people *gasp* like those gathered in the room! Something must be done! The first name off their lips is “Scorpion.” We do not return to this moment or these men again in the movie so there’s no reason for me to have mentioned it here. I just love how wrong-headed the scene is. “This terrorism situation has gotten out of control! They’re no longer killing plebes, they’re killing important people like us! Now we need to take it seriously.”
So the man we saw at the beginning is, in fact, Scorpion, aka Steve Woods. Because this is an 80’s actioner and the movie wants me to refer to him as "Scorpion," I’m going to refer to him as “Steve” throughout. Steve is such a great anti-terror operative for the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) that whatever case he was called back from Spain for, he’s instead dispatched to deal with terrorists who have taken over a plane. He goes on board, unarmed, and manages to disarm all the terrorists, only killing the female one. I think the only person he kills in the movie is that woman. It’s also strange that, considering they were all armed with automatic weapons, the terrorists don’t start lighting up the passengers as soon as Steve gets all kicky. And he was really lucky that they didn’t have any deadman switch or further accomplices hidden in the back.
I’m saying for being the greatest anti-terror agent ever, Steve’s not very good.
The papers love him, though, and give him a big write-up on the front page of the next morning’s edition, including his real name! That’s treated as a problem but never comes up again. Steve is razed by two other members of the agency, one of whom plays the recorder when he’s bored.
Fabulous. The agent’s quirk is he’s an annoying third-grader.
I’m getting bogged down in the minutiae of stupid. Steve’s next case is to guard Faued, a terrorist that’s turning state’s evidence. Steve clocks out of his first shift and hands Faued over to recorder agent, but Faued lets assassins in who kill the recorder kid. Thank Christ. Then they shoot up Faued.
The lawyer who organized Faued’s testimony is giving Steve lip over Faued getting shot, but Steve wants to know how his partner got killed. Turns out Steve and the recorder kid were friends since childhood and the recorder kid became an agent because a corrupt politician was pushing his dad around when he was a kid. This is communicated via flashback where the recorder kid as a kid tries to push over a statue and fails. Since that doesn’t communicate anything, Steve tells us again later.
Obviously Steve’s new search for the recorder kid’s killer is going to ultimately parallel recorder kid’s obsession with stopping crooked politicians and it’ll turn out the lawyer who’s riding Steve’s ass all throughout the movie is behind everything. Nope.
Yeah, just nope. That doesn’t happen. Layer’s just a dick. I think we’re supposed to dislike him because he’s a hot-shot rich guy obsessed with his public persona, not like Steve who lives on a house boat, is a hot-shot agent getting written up in the papers constantly, and has one Porsche in Europe and one Porsche the US (his American one is tan).
Steve manages to track down the assassins who killed recorder kid and put Faued in a coma, but that leads to a dead end. Plus Faued dies. Then he tracks down a woman Faued was trying to contact in Hawaii. He goes there, gets more clues, ultimately learns that the man they were guarding was paid to pretend to be Faued by the real Faued. They find the real guy, capture him, and the lawyer comes to kiss Steve’s ass. Steve walks away, sees the statue that recorder kid hated in the park, and finally shoves it over because that’s what the movie was about all along. THE END.
I’m gonna surprise you here and say this movie was kind of stupid. Fist of the B-List has a write-up of it that goes into more details about the players involved including the fact that the lead was an International Karate Tournament champion and, considering that, the movie has very few fight scenes. That is one of the film’s flaws: it has this mustachioed dimwit doing a lot of detective work, but how he gets from point-to-point doesn’t make sense and he tends to miss obvious things.
Generally speaking, the movie’s laughably bad and I suppose it’s a recommend on that level. I kept rolling my eyes and waiting for the movie to get to the obvious scenes that of course would be there, and then it didn’t have them. The recorder kid’s mission to out crooked politicians doesn’t get a payoff in the lawyer being crooked. The newspaper revealing Steve's real name doesn't become an issue at all. And, of course, the mindless action sequences that are going to be in a film called Scorpion aren't.
The movie is highly riffable, but otherwise a bit dull. Every scene that feels like it’s ramping up to a big action setpiece just turns into a calm and staid police procedural. Even the scene where Steve is chasing one of the killers across the rooftops doesn’t play out how you’d expect. Killer jumps, comes up a bit short, and is hanging from the edge by his hands. Steve walks up to the edge of the first building, leans over, and… basically hangs out while the killer’s grip loosens and he falls. Steve’s reaction is very, “Oh. Well. That’s um… Yeah. This is just going to be unfortunate. A-yup, there he goes.”
Gather your friends, shout things at this movie, just don’t bother suffering it alone.
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