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Strong and Moving!

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Graduate student and aspiring marathon runner Thomas "Babe" Levy (an excellent and engaging performance by Dustin Hoffman) discovers that his wayward brother Henry (the always terrific Roy Scheider) works as some kind of government agent which in turn causes Thomas to get embroiled in a complex and sinister plot concerning a missing cache of diamonds that vicious Nazi war criminal Christian Szell (superbly played with chilling conviction by Laurence Olivier) wants to gain possession of.Director John Schlesinger, working from gripping and intricate script by William Goldman, keeps the riveting story hurtling along at a constant pace, makes nice use of gritty'n'grungy New York City locations, takes time to develop the characters, grounds the arresting premise in a plausibly harsh urban reality, and ably builds plenty of nerve-jangling suspense, with the legendary "Is it safe?" dental torture set piece rating as a genuinely harrowing set piece. The sound acting from the top-drawer cast keeps this film humming: William Devane as the shifty and untrustworthy Janeway, Marthe Keller as foxy foreign exchange student Elsa, Richard Bright and Marc Lawrence as a pair of brutish thugs, Tito Goya as brash street punk Melendez, and Fritz Weaver as exacting history professor Biesenthal. Conrad L. Hall's glossy cinematography provides a pleasing polished look. Michael Small's shuddery score hits the spine-tingling spot. An expertly crafted nail-biter.

Well-shot, well-made, quite brilliant; those were the thoughts running through my mind as I started watching this excellent '70s thriller, which sits neatly with the unconnected BOYS FROM BRAZIL. It's the kind of expert, thrill-packed movie that never lets up from the word go, utilising the cream of Hollywood talent and ability to create one of the all-time classics of the genre. As with the best thrillers, the plot is simple, Hitchcockian in nature: a graduate student, who enjoys running as a hobby, becomes caught up in a conspiracy involving a former Nazi concentration camp commander.To say too much more would be to spoil it, but what evolves is a twist-packed film full of great action sequences: there are sweaty chases, nightmarish moments of claustrophobia, shoot-outs, one of the best hand-to-hand battles I've seen and, of course, a set-piece sequence involving dentistry tools and a drill that has gone down in history as one of the most fear-inducing and repulsive ever seen. One of the biggest surprises I had was seeing Roy Scheider as a tough, muscle-packed fighter whose bout against a Chinese assassin is quite simply brilliant. Usually Scheider plays these lean, slender leading men but not so here: now that's acting! The main role is taken by a sympathetic Dustin Hoffman, required to do quite a lot of emoting in his part and never failing to do the job. The scene-stealing Laurence Olivier has one of the biggest parts of his later career, playing a thoroughly evil, cold and clinical ex-Nazi who you hope will get his just desserts by the time the credits roll. It works, because the film starts off feeling disjointed but gets gradually better and better as it goes on, as the plot elements fit together, as the cast list grows smaller and in the end it's just a showdown between two guys with everything to gain and everything to lose. Wonderful choreography, plenty of black humour, some unpleasant violence and a great supporting cast (including a suitably slimy William Devane) – what more could you want from a thriller? The answer is nothing, as this is one of the best of all time.

Based on the 1974 novel of the same name by William Goldman who adapted it for the screen, this is an engrossing and often very frightening thriller. The labyrinthine plot holds together surprisingly well, even if they were a few moments here and there where I found it slightly difficult to suspend my disbelief. While the writing is certainly strong, I don't think that it is of the same very high standard that Goldman set for himself in other films. John Schlesinger's direction is generally very good when it comes to maintaining a high level of tension but there are some rather silly and over the top bits which I found difficult to take seriously.The film stars Dustin Hoffman in an excellent performance as Thomas Babington "Babe" Levy, a history PhD student at Columbia University. Babe is a very damaged soul whose dissertation concerns tyranny in American political life. Not so coincidentally, his father H.P. Levy was a renowned historian who was hounded out of academia because of allegations that he was a Communist during the McCarthy era. The terrible stress that he was under led him to start drinking heavily and ultimately to commit suicide. In large part because Babe was the one who found his father's body 20 years earlier, he has never truly come to terms with what happened. As such, his dissertation runs the risk of being a personal crusade against McCarthyism as opposed to a detached contribution to the field of 20th Century American history. Babe is training himself to run in a marathon, hence the film's title, and I took this as being representative of the fact that he is trying to run away from his real life by dwelling on the past and not in the way that an historian should. Babe has quite a chip on his shoulder and, in spite of the fact that he is a good, decent man, he seems as if he is not always the easiest person in the world to get along with. However, I think that his experiences in the film help him to grow as a person.Although he probably only appears on screen for a quarter of the running time at most, Laurence Olivier nevertheless steals the show with his wonderful performance as the infamous Nazi doctor Christian Szell, who was reported dead in May 1945 but has been in hiding in Uruguay for more than three decades. A thinly veiled version of Josef Mengele, Szell is a dentist who was responsible for removing gold from the prisoners' teeth in Auschwitz as well as for subjecting them to various other forms of torture. Due to his all- white hair, he received the nickname of der weiße Engel, meaning "the white angel" (of death, presumably). During the war, he instituted a scheme in which he promised to help wealthy Jews escape from Auschwitz in exchange for their diamonds. Since then, he has been able to live in luxury by selling the diamonds, which are kept in a safe deposit box in New York. He has one of the keys whereas his brother Klaus has the other. However, Klaus - played by Hindenburg disaster survivor Ben Dova - is killed in a road rage incident in Manhattan. This means that Szell must take the major risk of travelling to New York himself in order to continue living in the manner to which he has become accustomed. In the extraordinarily effective "Is it safe?" scene, Szell tortures Babe by using a dental probe on his cavity in an attempt to find out whether it is safe for him to retrieve the diamonds. Olivier casts a terrifying shadow as Szell, never making the mistake of overplaying the role. In fact, the reason that he is so frightening is that he remains outwardly calm for much of the film, particularly during the torture scenes. He and Hoffman make an unlikely duo but they work extremely well together. Olivier received his only nomination for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar but lost to Jason Robards for his decidedly mediocre, boring performance as Ben Bradlee in "All the President's Men", another film starring Hoffman and written by Goldman. I had a few problems with the character of Henry "Doc" Levy, Babe's older brother who is one of the many couriers responsible for transporting the diamonds to Szell. Although he plays the role of an oil executive, Doc is in actuality an agent for the Division, an organisation which handles the matters that the CIA does not want to get involved in. The Division collaborates with Szell in his diamond scheme in exchange for information on other and probably less important Nazi fugitives. Roy Scheider is a very good actor and he has always had a likable screen presence but that's part of the problem, really. Doc should be a much darker or at least morally ambiguous character than he is but he comes across as a comparatively nice guy in spite of his involvement with an infamous Nazi, an approach which I did not think worked very well. In contrast, his superior Peter Janeway, played very well by William Devane, is very slimy and I would have preferred if the same was true of Doc. It is not often that I accuse a film of being too subtle but this is definitely the exception. Marthe Keller is quite strong as Elsa Opal, Babe's seemingly Swiss new girlfriend who is not entirely honest with him. Marc Lawrence and Richard Bright barely say a word but they are extremely intimidating as Szell's henchmen Karl and Erhardt. The film also features strong appearances in small roles from the great character actor Fritz Weaver as Professor Biesenthal and Jacques Marin as LeClerc.Overall, this is an extremely effective thriller but it could have been an even better one with slightly stronger writing and direction.

"Marathon Man" is a film that divides folks into two groups--those who think it's a neat film about a vicious Nazi living in the modern world and those who think it's so graphic and so violent that they'd rather never watch it in the first place. I learned this when I tried watching it with my wife...as after a while she just left the room because she couldn't stand the dental scene near the end. I know many folks who felt the same way as my lovely wife...and many who liked the film. My advice is NOT to watch it if you have a phobia about dentists or don't want to see some blood! It's certainly NOT an easy film to watch.The story is about a vicious Dr. Mengele-like Nazi who leaves his secure hiding place in South America to come to America in search of stolen diamonds. Along the way, there's some weird plot involving the US government and Dustin Hoffman. It's all a bit confusing but never dull--especially when an old Jewish survivor spots Szell on the streets!The film is complex and fascinating. The end you'll either love or hate...but it never is dull.