Jack Thompson was probably the closest thing Australian cinema had to a genuine box office name in 1975 after his success in Petersen and Sunday Too Far Away but that screeched to a halt with this unhappy adaptation of Jon Cleary's second Scobie Malone novel. Rod Taylor wasn't very good as Scobie in The High Commissioner but he was better than Thompson here, who while still a good looking charismatic presence, just feels all wrong - too young and insubordinate and inauthentic. It doesn't help he's required to participate in a fair amount of sex comedy, living in a singles only apartment full of topless women hanging around the pool and sleeping with a bunch of them. But even without that he wouldn't be convincing.
Some of this isn't too bad - when the mystery kicks off and the amounts of boobs decreases, it's passable enough in a 70s Crawfords way, with Sydney Harbour always looking pretty (the corpse is discovered at the Opera House). The structure is also interesting - it starts with the discovery of Judy Morris' corpse then flashes back to sequences involving her - then we see how she died about two thirds of the way through then it kicks on to whether a Minister is going to get busted. It's actually a pretty decent story.
But it keeps dropping the ball - Thompson's silly relationship with assistant Shane Porteous, an incredibly unconvincing scene at the end where Thompson meets with some powers that be (Premier, Attorney General etc) and they try to shut things down. There's also some bad acting from the support cast. A real shame.
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