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Scorpio (film)

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Scorpio is a 1973 film, set during the Cold War, in which the CIA orders free-lance operative Scorpio to assassinate his former CIA mentor Cross and a deadly cat-and-mouse game ensues.

Directed by Michael Winner. Written by David W. Rintels and Gerald Wilson.
When Scorpio wants you... there is no place to hide!  taglines

Cross

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  • One more thing for your education. The more a man tells you, the more dangerous you become to him. And the more dangerous you become, the shorter the options on your future.

Jean 'Scorpio' Laurier

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  • Never stand still when you run and never run in a straight line. That's ithe first thing Cross taught me. Cross is an organizer. He plans down to the finest margin of error. You can't follow his mistakes, so you follow his skill.

Dialogue

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Cross: You should let those cats out once in a while.
Scorpio: Outside they couldn't survive. They were bred for degeneracy. Like a whore.
Scorpio: Do you ever count the dead, Cross?
Cross: You're beautiful, Jean, but sometimes you have the bad breath of priests.
Scorpio: Did you see the opposition?
Cross: I saw him.
Scorpio: What's Zharkov doing on the plane?
Cross: How many times you been out with me?
Scorpio: Six, maybe seven.
Cross: You're good, Jean. Better than good. You're smart, you understand. But that still leaves you a contract button man, necessary only because the CIA doesn't hold with doing its own killing.
McLeod: You were supposed to kill Cross at the Paris job.
Scorpio: No contract.
McLeod: You took the money. You left the money. Why?
Scorpio: Cross had his contract in first. I don't play games when the rules are bent.
McLeod: No one bends them faster than Cross.
Scorpio: Never with me.
McLeod: I want Cross. And I want him burned. You know him best. Find him.
Scorpio: You make too many mistakes.
McLeod: Like?
Scorpio: You confuse what you want with what I want.
McLeod: Now, your government would like more names.
Scorpio: Your second mistake, McLeod. Cross gave me enough information on each operation we did together. Not conclusive, but enough to make a strange reading. You can't let me go into a public court.
McLeod: What do you want?
Scorpio: I want inside.
McLeod: Where?
Scorpio: Beirut.
McLeod: You want Cross's job? If you get Cross, you get his posting.
Scorpio: More.
McLeod: More?
Scorpio: $25,000.
McLeod: Where's Cross?
Scorpio: More.
McLeod: You run it right to the edge, don't you? What?
Scorpio: I want to know the reason.
McLeod: Executive order. You don't question a directive in the Agency, Scorpio.
Scorpio: I'm not in the Agency until I get Cross. The reason?
McLeod: He's a face, a double agent. He sold to the opposition and he has a lot more to sell. Do you know where Cross is or don't you?
Scorpio: I don't. But a man named Zharkov will.
Zharkov: Have you noticed, Cross, that we are being replaced by young men with bright, stupid faces, a sense of fashion, and a dedication to nothing more than efficiency? Keepers of machines, pushers of buttons, hardware men with highly complex toys, and, except for language, not an iota of difference between the American model and the Soviet model.
Cross: [toasting] Here's to dinosaurs.
Mitchell: handing over a package] Everyone Cross used to know in Vienna.
Scorpio: Everyone Cross used to know that you know.
Mitchell: We're monitoring telephone calls to America, telegrams and radio telegrams.
Scorpio: I want the tapes brought here.
Mitchell: We've got a watch on all the embassies, but if Cross doesn't move, he'll be damn near invisible.
Scorpio: He'll move. He'll try to get his wife out. He'll need funds and help.
Mitchell: Not if he goes over.
Scorpio: He won't.
Mitchell: McLeod thinks he might.
Scorpio: If he was going over, he'd be in Moscow, not Vienna. The trouble with McLeod is that he thinks like McLeod. You know what a dybbuk is, Mitchell?
Mitchell: Some son of Jewish sprite or ghost.
Scorpio: A spirit that invades another human form. I'm the dybbuk of Cross's labyrinth mind. I live inside him. He'll move.
Cross: You should have done it in Paris, Jean.
Scorpio: The price wasn't right.
Cross: And now it is?
Scorpio: Yes, now it is.
Cross: I could kill you, Jean.
Scorpio: Take it, then, Cross. It won't come around again.
Cross: Can we talk?
Scorpio: Sure.
Cross: McLeod name my sin?
Scorpio: He said you sold and had more to sell.
Cross: And you believe that?
Scorpio: Is it true? I want to know.
Cross: For your education? No, it isn't true.
Scorpio: Zharkov.
Cross: What about Zharkov?
Scorpio: He is the opposition.
Cross: I've known Zharkov for almost 30 years. As an ally, as an enemy and always as a friend. We're both premature antifascists, as they used to say in Washington. But Zharkov hasn't sold out and neither have I.
Scorpio: Then why does McLeod want you dead?
Cross: Why don't you ask him that?
Scorpio: I'm asking you.
Cross: You're looking for God's shining face, aren't you, Jean? Something to believe in. Like a young girl in a white Communion dress. But you've got the soul of a torturer, so your need is greater.
Scorpio: You lied to me, Cross, and you used me. For that I'm going to kill you.
Cross: I never lied to you, Jean. I used you, but I never lied to you.
Cross: You still don't have any questions?
Zemetkin: What answers could you have that would make any difference? I love you, Cross.
Cross: And I you, Max. That's why I must tell you there could be pain in this.
Zemetkin: I have been inoculated. You know, Cross, I used to think that the only music I would ever hear, no matter what I was really playing, was the music we played each morning when the others went out to work. Or the music for the selection, when the lucky ones went into the showers. Now I can hear Brahms... And not crying. But one image has never blurred. Cross, you coming through that gate and taking me home.
Zharkov: You see before you the last of a race of giants.
[Cross laughs]
Zharkov: No, no, no. I mean seriously.
Cross: Seriously?
Zharkov: I still believe. I'm still a communist.
Cross: Communist? For Christ's sakes! After what you've seen? You've seen it turn brutal... inhuman.
Zharkov: No, Cross. I've seen men use it badly.
Cross: What about the trials? The purges?
Zharkov: Trials, purges, they are words you have read somewhere, Cross. My trial was so grotesque, my hours of interrogation so terrible that I was numb. It was a kind of frontal lobotomy without anesthetic. And the labor camps, where men, good communists' old fighters, men who believed in the dignity of man above all else, were used as drought animals to pull logs on frozen feet. That this could be the result of all I had committed my life to.
Cross: But, baby, at that moment, didn't you realize what was happening?
Zharkov: At that moment I tried to understand what had happened to me. Most of us there were communists, not Stalinists. That is why we were there. Nothing had happened to make me renounce myself. I was still a communist. Stalin couldn't take it away from me. And now the dull, gray stupidity that sends the tanks into Prague because it has no imagination, it can't take it from me either. I am still a communist.
Cross: You're still an idiot. You still serve that dull, gray stupidity.
Zharkov: And when they pull the wire on me, I'll deliver you to them, Cross.
McLeod: [at Sarah's funeral] The hunter home from the hill.
Scorpio: I'd buy a plot here soon, Mr. McLeod. It's a nice cemetery.
McLeod: You think I'm responsible for this?
Scorpio: Cross will.
McLeod: And you think he'll come back?
Scorpio: Don't you?
McLeod: We have evidence that he's in Moscow.
Scorpio: Then burn incense in front of it, McLeod. And pray.
Cross: You'll have to look me in the eye when you kill me, Jean.
Scorpio: That won't bother me. Not this time.
Cross: No, you're a one-talent man, Frenchman. You took this contract 'cause you wanted inside, you wanted my job, and you needed a McLeod to carry your sins for you.
Scorpio: I was finished with you, Cross. I was going home tomorrow... With her. She was my way out.
Cross: I'm sorry about the girl. Truly sorry. But I had no part of her plans. She was a Czech courier, and very good. A lot of hard work went into collecting this. Go ahead, Scorpio. It should be easy. You'd be doing both of us a favor, and there's an outside chance they might let you live. Two for one. There's a room just down the hall from McLeod's office, where grown men play a game. It's a bit like Monopoly, only more people get hurt. There's no good... And no bad. Jesus. The object is not to win, but not to lose, and the only rule is to stay in the game.

Taglines

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  • When Scorpio wants you... there is no place to hide!
  • The most incredible manhunt of them all!
  • ...Code Name for a Killer!

Cast

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