LA SCORTA Movie Review

The Bodyguards
The Escorts

This is a taut and intelligent fact-based thriller about four carabinieri who struggle to maintain some semblance of their normal lives after being assigned to protect a judge (Carlo Cecchi) who's volunteered to investigate political corruption and murder in a crime-ridden Sicilian town. The previous judge, and his escort, were assassinated while on the same case, and the tension of waiting for another explosion of violence soon reaches the breaking point. Many of these men are at cross-purposes, suspecting and double-crossing each other as the investigation tightens its noose, and director Riccardo (Ricky) Tognazzi sometimes drops the ball when it comes to keeping clean track of who's spying on whom. It's still a tight, high-energy police story, centering on the sometimes-precarious balance of power between the mob and the state, with a few dedicated individuals struggling to deliver some kind of justice between two corrupt extremes. La Scorta (The Escort) is helped enormously by the pulse-pounding music of Ennio Morricone; it's an effective, energizing variation on his classic score for Elio Petri's 1970 police corruption thriller, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion. With Enrico Lo Verso (The Stolen Children, Lamerica).

NEXT STOP … Z, Who Killed Pasolini?, Serpico

1994 92m/C IT Claudio Amendola, Enrico Lo Verso, Tony Sperandeo, Ricky Memphis, Carlo Cecchi, Leo Gullotta; D: Ricardo Tognazzi; W: Graziano Diana, Simona Izzo; ?: Ennio Morricone. VHS NYF