Purely Joyful Movie!

Powerful

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Disgraced former CIA operative Stephen Guerin (an excellent and convincing performance by William Peterson) lives in exile on the lush tropical island of Curacao. Guerin finds himself mixed up in a deadly insurance scam involving fellow expatriate and lone best friend Cornelius Wettering (robustly played by George C. Scott).While the basic story sounds intriguing and the picturesque island scenery sure looks nice, this film alas never cooks the way that it ought to because of pedestrian direction by Carl Schultz, an often plodding pace, James D. Buchanan's overly convoluted script, a crippling dearth of tension, and a narrative that gets bogged down in too much rather tedious talk without nearly enough exciting action to offset it. Fortunately, the good cast keeps this movie watchable: Julie Carmen as Guerin's hard-nosed old flame Julia, Alexei Sayle as the shifty Seamuller, Maria Elligsen as the spunky Diana, Dennis Lipscomb as stuffy superior Henry Rawlings, Philip Anglim as pesky detective Van Vlaanderen, and George Cheung as the slippery Worthy Hsung. Trish Van Devere is wasted in a minor nothing role as a secretary. Ellery Ryan's slick cinematography and the spare moody score by Colin Towns are both up to speed. A decent diversion.

What is wrong with CURACAO ( Also known as DEADLY CURRENTS though what the reasonn for the name change is I have no idea ) can probably be summed up where a woman says to her lover :" Keep it down baby , I'm trying to sleep " It's not the dialogue that's the problem or the way it's delivered , it's the fact the actress has has a Central European accent . Nothing wrong with that until it's revealed her character is from Philidelphia in the United States ! This what struck me about this thriller while watching it - The way accents don't match their characters . Apart from the Philly woman with a German accent we see a South African with an English accent , a local police chief who sounds like he's an Irishman impersonating a Gestapo officer and worst of all George C Scott playing someone who's either Dutch or British with an accent that sounds like it might be American tinged with South African . You soon give up following what's on screen and end up concentrating on what nationality a character might be due to the strange way they speak . It's interesting to note that this site hasn't given this movie a country of origin . With so many different actors from different countries you do feel that this was produced by the United Nations Even if you're not curious about accents or dialects you'll probably have to give up following the action anyway because CURACAO is plot less . Things happen like a boat exploding , and a hostage situation and the hero being recruited as an agent for South African intelligence but you're left scratching your head wondering what the heck this is all leading to . I was lost

I have just watched "Curacao"on cable and I found it quite reasonable for late night watching. It has nice exotic locations and quite a number of really mysterious characters. The storyline was at least as good as most of the crime investigation stories that William Peterson is in now that he is older. In some way which I can not really explain it reminded me of a Humphrey Bogart film, maybe with Alexei Sayle in the Sydney Greenstreet role. Re the character named Rose, played by Trish van Devere, I think that Stephen Geurin (William Petersen) called the secretary "Rose" when he went in to his office in the embassy near the beginning of the film.

"Curacao" is a foreign intrigue drama set on the title Caribbean Island which involves a retired sea captain and bar owner (Scott) and a demoted CIA field operative (Petersen). The film has numerous bad guys, foreign agents and thugs, skulking about the pair of protagonists all coveting something Scott has which they want and are prepared to kill for. A lukewarm low budget tv flick, "Curacao" is spiced up with a couple of babes and use some Carnival street parades as window dressing. Little more than fodder for the bored couch potato. C-