User reviews

Schlesinger made a great action-suspense film and married it to the artistry of unique talents… Hoffman was, by then, a dynamic, young and incredibly versatile film actor with three Academy Award nominations already under his belt for "The Graduate," "Midnight Cowboy," and "Lenny."

But the key to "Marathon Man" was the chemistry between its stars… Perhaps one of the most gut-wrenching and most memorable scenes in the film comes when Hoffman is captured and tortured by Olivier who plays the role of a mean and vicious and sadistic Nazi war criminal, Christian Szell… Olivier's performance resulted in a 1976 Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor…

In 1945, Szell ran the experimental camp at Auschwitz where they called him the White Angel… He was a dentist and could provide escape for any Jew who was willing to pay the price… He started out with gold, naturally, but very quickly worked his way up to diamonds…

As Szell saw the end early, he sneaked his brother into America with the diamonds… And they were right here, in New York, in a safe deposit-box until Szell's brother got killed in a head-on collision with an oil truck…

Uniquely built, and with a marvelous, rugged face, Roy Scheider, well known for his strong performances in "The French Connection," "Klute," and "Jaws," came on board as Hoffman's mysterious businessman brother, getting the rare chance to play a character that's both hero and villain… Doc is a fascinating guy because he chooses to work out his problems in a much different way than Dustin's character does… He was very touched and very moved by his father's death, but he abandoned all his hopes for whatever he intended to do and he became a spy, a killer, a very jaded personality…

In doing something truly suspenseful, Schlesinger accomplished a film that's largely about fear and it's about pain and the infliction of pain because of fear… The thrilling sensation of great expectations came on the 47th Street in the diamond district in New York, where Schlesinger gets the best of it

Quite apart from the infamous torture scene, which I found extremely difficult to watch without howling in horror (actually that's a lie, I DID howl) this film is FULL of nervous tension that occasionally boils over - the way it's been done is masterful. The bouncing-ball scene in the darkened building should be utterly prosaic, but it really isn't - the way it's choreographed and shot brings such an air of menace and trepidation you'll be biting your nails off. There's much of a similar vein in 'Marathon Man', and although the storyline is sometimes almost buried through the relentless suffocating tension, it's extremely watchable (with a cushion to hide behind at certain points) and one of the greatest non-Hitchcock thrillers I've ever seen. Don't hesitate!

Marathon Man starts off rather slowly, and for the first hour at least, it feels as if you're watching a human drama rather than a thriller. However, unlike a lot of thrillers; Marathon Man uses this time to create characters and establish the situation, which ultimately pays off later on in the film when the movie really gets going. When the film does step on the gas, it is as thrilling as any thriller you will ever see; Dustin Hoffman is subjected to all sorts of things, most notably an excruciating torture sequence. This scene is powerful and painful on it's own, but it is made more so by the fact that we have already gotten to know the character and therefore we feel sympathy for him, as well as cringing at the images we see on screen. That scene alone is enough to propel the movie in the realms of greatness, as it is simply one of the most powerful that cinema has ever given us; but this movie is a hell of a lot more than just a torture sequence.

The plot revolves around a car crash that takes place in downtown New York. One of the men in this crash is the brother of the infamous Nazi war criminal, Szell, who has some diamonds hidden in a safety deposit box. From then on, many members of a US defence organisation, known as "The Division", begin turning up dead and soon after, Thomas Levy, a college student, obsessive runner and the brother of one of The Division's members, becomes embroiled in the plot. It is easy to see the parallels between the plot movie and World War 2, from the withered ex-Nazi (indicative of the state of the actual regime), to his enemies being American; the movie has world war 2 written all over it. The film is excellently directed throughout by John Schlesinger. Schlesinger, probably best known for "Midnight Cowboy" does a fantastic job of keeping the audience on the edge of their seat for the duration of the movie. A constant foreboding feel is created, and you're never truly sure of what will happen. This is exactly what you want in a thriller, as nobody likes it when they can predict what will happen next.

Dustin Hoffman takes the lead role of Thomas Levy. Dustin Hoffman is a fantastic actor, and he certainly gets to flex his acting muscles here, in a film which sees him go through all manner of unpleasant scenes and also hold up lots of relationships with various characters, as well as drawing sympathy from the audience to accent his situation. Roy Scheider (of Jaws fame) stars opposite Dustin Hoffman in the movie. Scheider doesn't get a great deal of screentime in the film, but he still manages to do good things with the time he does have. The third lead role, that of the Nazi war criminal, is taken by Lawrence Olivier, who is also a fantastic actor and gives a great performance in this film. He gives his character just the right atmosphere, and we can tell just by looking at the man that he is cold and uncaring, and also past it; which is the crux of his character.

The film ends with a spectacular sequence, which sees the movie and the two centrals characters come to a satisfying conclusion. The characters are the central theme in this movie, and had the movie have ended differently it could have unravelled everything that it had created, but the movie's end is absolutely perfect and does the entire movie justice. A brilliant piece of cinema.

I think this is the best thriller I've ever seen. If you look at it today, it also proves that audiences were more intelligent in 1976 than they are now. MM was a fairly sizeable hit movie - despite making absolutely NO concessions to the lazy filmgoer who refuses to think. Nowadays you can read actual film critics who call something like "The Matrix" confusing and hard to follow, when in fact Laurence Fishburne just stands there and TELLS YOU what is happening. 25 years of lifeless, same old same old movies and TV have made most people into dimbulbs. If you're not one of them you'll love MM.

The tagline for director John Schlesinger's "Marathon Man" read simply "A Thriller"--and so it is, despite a heavy sag of masochistic weight in its midsection. Dustin Hoffman looks in great shape playing a Columbia grad student, still haunted by his father's suicide (and perhaps in training for the New York marathon), who gets mixed up by proxy in his nefarious older brother's activities; seems his sibling has been working secretly as a courier in stolen gems, and has run afoul of Szell, a.k.a. The White Angel, the most notorious Nazi war-criminal still alive. Schlesinger shows off a nasty side of himself, staging some dental torture scenes that are just about impossible to watch; even worse, not all of the pieces in William Goldman's adaptation of his bestseller fit accordingly. Both men eagerly press ahead so that the story gaps won't be so noticeable, and there's much zig-zagging across the continents leaving red herrings, street bombs, and character intricacies in the picture's wake. We learn so little about Hoffman's brother (played by an equally fit Roy Scheider) that, by the film's climax, we still don't know whose side he was he on--or why his cohorts lost trust in him. Marthe Keller's mysterious German beauty is another character muddle, a pretense of writer Goldman who was really out to stack this deck against Hoffman's runner. Laurence Olivier's knife-wielding Nazi beast is perplexing as well, alternating a steely coldness with an aged confusion (why, for instance, is he staking out jewelry stores just for today's market values--isn't the diamond trade this man's forte?). "Marathon Man" needed less torture scenes (which aren't really suspenseful as much as they are excruciating) and more clear-headed chess moves. It leaves a bushel of questions behind, though it is a handsome piece of work, well-cast and with an intrinsically satisfying finale. **1/2 from ****

Suspense filled, is the only adequate description I can think of. The direction is bleak and taut, the movie's music theme is like a growing menace and the acting of the leads is peerless. The film's most famous scene, the dentist chair interrogation has become part of pop culture, and deservedly so. This, along with many other scenes, including the enemies breaking into the bathroom, are a masterful example of how to create almost unbearable tension on film.

The movie "Marathon Man" starts out with a car accident where Christian Szell's, Laurence Olivier, brother Klaus, Ben Dova, is killed. The word comes back to Szell in Paraguay, or is it Brazil, that Szell's fortune in diamonds is in danger, why? For some reason Szell and his henchmen take off for NYC after being for some 30 years in hiding from the international courts for war crimes. Why does Szell blow his cover and expose himself to jail or worse? We really don't seem to know. All I could gather from the plot is that Szell wanted to know, as he kept saying over and over in the movie, "Is it safe"? Safe from what? There are diamonds in a safe-deposit box in a curtain midtown bank and Szell had the key to it so what was he so worried about since his brother Klaus had no trouble at all going in and out of the bank with the diamonds, as we've seen in the beginning of the movie which Klaus must have been doing for years. Szell walking all over the streets of NYC without a care in the world why would't he be safe when he goes in and out in just this one bank with his henchmen, one who has a limp, there protecting him? Klaus when he was alive also could have sent them, the diamonds, registered mail back to Szell in South America if he was so worried about them being lost or stolen. Why now was Szell who seemed to have no fear or trouble at all in murdering a number of people, one on a crowed midtown street in broad daylight, so paranoid about? It turns out that Szell is somehow connected with this super-secretive US government agency who's protecting him from the law for services rendered. So why can't they take care of Szell's problems, whatever they are! They've been doing it since the end of WWII and it seems that the diamonds is what that agency is paying Szell for his services. Later in the movie Szell goes to, of all places, the midtown diamond district on West 47th St to see what diamonds are selling on the open market! Why on earth does Szell have to go to the diamond district in midtown Manhattan to get an evaluation of how much diamonds are worth? Wasn't Szell informed enough, being involved with diamonds for years, to know this for himself? and why does he go to the diamond district in midtown Manhattan to get an evaluation where it seems that everybody there is a survivor from the concentration camp that Szell brutally ran during WWII and where he'd be immediately recognized! On top of all that crazy Szell acts toward those people there as if he was still running a concentration camp and that they were still his prisoners? The movie is so confusing with a convoluted love story between Babe, Dustin Hoffman, and the mysterious Columbia Collage student Helga, Marthe Keller, added in that almost half way through the film. I think that the director, John Schlesinger, had to put in a scene in where William Devane who plays Jeneway, also a member of this super-secretive government agency, who like Simon Okland in the movie "Psycho" after he "saved" Babe from Szell's henchmen starts talking into the camera. Jeneway looks as if he were addressing the movie audience as he tells Babe everything about Szell and his brother Doc,Roy Scheider, who also works for the agency, who also works with Szell. There's also the diamonds that Szell has hidden in a bank safe deposit box in a mid-town Manhattan bank and the Nazis and the super-secretive agency and and blab blab blab in order so that those of us, still awake and watching, can get just some idea of what the heck is going on in the movie! Just who the hell is this guy Jenaway anyway and who's he working for in the first place? Szell? the CIA? the KBG? the Brooklyn Dodgers? Well anyway getting back to more important things in "Marathon Man". One of my favorite and most exciting moments in the film is when Babe escapes from Szell clutches and tooth drilling equipment and is being chased all over NYC by Szell's boys. Beaten bloodied dirty after being brutally tortured and without having slept for what seemed like days and only dressed in pajama bottoms Babe flags down a cab by the Brooklyn Bridge getting away from Szell's gang. Babe then goes all the way uptown to his apartment in Washington Heights a good ten miles or so. You would think that the cabbie would know enough not to pick up someone looking like an escapee from a mental institution, for that's just what Babe looked like. Not only can he be dangerous but just looking at his style of dress it's obvious that he doesn't have any money to pay for the long and expensive taxi ride. Not only does the cabbie pick Babe up but instead of driving Babe to the nearest hospital or police station to get help, due to the condition that he's in, he drives all the way up-town with Babe half-naked and out cold in the back seat. The cab driver is then surprised when he reaches his destination that Babe doesn't have any cash to pay for the fare? It must have been the cab drivers first day on the job. Yet for some strange reason it turned out that the Szell gang who had Babe in their grip and were torturing him forgot to take an expensive watch that Babe was wearing! Babe pays the car fare by giving the cabbie the watch instead of cash, it turned out to be the cabbies lucky day.

Two generations of acting styles come together in Marathon Man. Dustin Hoffman plays a most reluctant hero a young pacifist graduate student at Columbia University who is a distance runner. He gets way over his head with an arch Nazi war criminal Laurence Olivier who did not drag out his patented Mittel-Europa accent. Instead he spoke a most precise English for the role, just like a foreigner having to learn the tongue.

His brother Roy Scheider is supposed to be in the oil business. Their father was a victim of the McCarthy Era blacklist who killed himself. Scheider actually works for a branch of the CIA, no doubt as Hoffman says the father would disapprove. I'm wondering how he got clearance.

A whole bunch of people from that section are dying and when Scheider dies Hoffman goes into action not knowing who to trust. But he's lucky, very lucky.

Olivier who has been living in South America in seclusion is forced to come to America to get his fortune in diamonds in a safety deposit vault. He's forced to do this after his brother is killed in a traffic accident right at the beginning of the film. Olivier's Dr. Szell is as terrifying a villain as his Richard III. It's what got him an Oscar nomination his only one in the Supporting Actor category.

Marathon Man has a lot of holes in the story, but the acting between Hoffman and Olivier is not to be missed.

Ok, I like Dustin Hoffman. I like Roy Scheider, and Lawrence Olivier was a great actor. Fine. The dentist scene is visceral and creepy and quite memorable. Fine. People I respect have said many positive things about William Goldman. OK.

Having said that, this movie rates HIGH on the Unintentional Comedy Scale. The plot is unthinkably, profoundly inane and laughable and nonsensical. I.N.A.N.E. Let me get this right, and I am quoting other commenters here, `a Columbia graduate student (Hoffman) unwittingly thrust into a game of deadly international intrigue when his brother (Scheider) is killed by a Nazi fugitive (Olivier) looking to smuggle a stash of diamonds he had left over from World War II after escaping justice' (virek213) and `Dustin Hoffman plays a marathon runner whose CIA brother is killed by an evil former nazi played by Laurence Olivier.' (Adam Morrison). You're kidding, right? Take out the words `Olivier' and `Hoffman' and we have the makings of a plot that doesn't even pass the laugh test.

Ask yourself, why is Hoffman's character involved? Because, ala Dr. Evil, Olivier stabs Scheider BUT DOESN'T KILL HIM. He just leaves. I mean, just slit the guy's throat. Come on. Even Scott Evil knows this. Just get a gun and shoot the dude. Oh, wait, I forgot, we have to leave him there, NOT QUITE DEAD, so that we can spend an enormous amount of complicated energy panicking about whether the guy we easily could have killed happened to say anything to anyone before he died. Brilliant. I mean, did any of you people think of this when you wrote your reviews? I am not making this up - there are POSITIVE reviews for this farce here.

Think this one through. I am an evil Nazi dentist. I decide to send a woman, a spy, to America, to seduce the brother of an American spy that I work with, so that I can. oh Jesus, I don't know. maybe if later and we're in a fantastical scenario where I need to kill the brother/find the brother, then she can - surprise - turn on him, since she will be the person he relies on, HE WILL BE COMPLETELY FOILED, and I will have succeeded! As part of this clever strategy, I send my goons (one of whom comically limps - where was the `BWAHAHAHAHA!'?, one of whom is Al Neri, on loan from Michael Corleone) to beat them up! Why? Who knows? Best not to ask!

I keep my diamonds in a bank in New York City. As the William Devane character says, `and now he's [Olivier] going to expose himself to incredible risk!' to come get the diamonds. Smart. Good plan. NYC. Good place to keep all my valuables, so if I ever need 'em, it will be INCREDIBLY RISKY to get 'em. But only risky because my brother, who had the key all along and could have just walked in there and gotten the diamonds at any time, ever, has just died because he could not overcome his evil irresistible impulse and ran into (I am not making this up) a gas truck, which exploded.

As for the scene at the house. I am just at a loss. I don't even know where to start. There are 5 people at the house, and 0 out of 5 of them behave with any logic. If you think from each of their standpoints what they are doing, and really try to puzzle it out, it's just nonsensical. I think the writers just decided, OK, everybody needs to be dead at the end of this scene, except for Hoffman. Then they tried to work backward and figure out how this whole shootout would actually play out, logically. Then they said, screw it, and went to lunch.

It's important, when you want to keep a low profile in an area where you could be recognized, and also you're an evil Nazi with a past, to bark at Jewish people in a screamy sort of ordering tone, so that you keep yourself disguised and don't jog any memories. And how many seconds before the woman who recognizes the Nazi gets run over by the car was it obvious that this clichéd movie convention was about to happen? For me, it was only about 8 seconds.

The closing scene is just laugh out loud funny. I mean, could it have been more awkward? Did that all take place so that our hero is not gunning someone down and is therefore morally able to claim the high ground? Nazi has to die, but hero can't just kill him. Isn't self-defense a little more standard of a movie convention that they could have gone with? He just trips on the steps and falls? Please. How lame is that? As lame as this whole moronic movie.

My alternate title for this one is "Nebbish vs. the Nazis". I've seen it 4 times and it's as scary each time. You can put aside all his 40's and 50's Shakespeare stuff--Laurence Olivier has never been better than in this movie. His portrayal of the monstrously cold-blooded Dr. Szell is truly blood curdling--in every scene he's in he's absolutely mesmerizing. (A welcome treat after his pitiful performance in "Bunny Lake is Missing.") Dustin Hoffman is the perfect foil as the naive and 'nebbishy' graduate student who inadvertantly gets embroiled in it all. He's as good in this as he's ever been. These two together in this film is acting at its very best. Solid supports from Roy Scheider and William Devane fill this out nicely. Notice that virtually no special effects were needed--They just don't make action thrilers like they used to.

Literally one of the best movies I have ever seen.

This was the last of the classic "paranoid thrillers of the 70's" I had left to see. I assumed it would be good, but I didn't expect it to be the absolute best of the genre movement, and one of the best movies ever made.

Everyone in the movie puts in absolutely ferocious performances but the movie itself is the true monster. The writing, pacing, editing, sound editing, locations - literally every single thing about it. It is an abrasive rollercoaster that never stops for a second, constantly taking you on sharp turns you could never possibly see coming.

This is a jarring reminder of what cinema was at it's true potential and what seems to be it's peak, especially looking back on this nearly half a century later and noting how superior it is to 99% of movies coming out now in so many ways, so blatantly. We could still be making films this riveting, powerful, and enticing but somehow we've been steered so far off the course that no one is funding them anymore! Such a shame!

I have always found this to be a very entertaining, involving, taut suspense movie with some very dramatic scenes. I've seen in three times and liked it better each time, particularly since it's been available on DVD which enhanced the sound from mono to stereo, and the 1.85:1 widescreen enhancing the cinematography.

I didn't find the infamous (this was quite a buzz when the film came out) dentist scene to be as terrifying as it was made up to be and the references to the McCarthy hearings are a bit annoying and typical of Hollywood director John Scheslinger. It's also a typical modern-day film in which the U.S government's police agencies are corrupt (oh, puhleeze, filmmakers - think of something new).

However, despite those negatives, the film is fascinating with no dry spots despite its two-hour length. There is a nice variety of action scenes and very interesting characters. Marthe Keller never looked better. Too bad she didn't make more movies in the U.S. Dustin Hoffman, as he did so well in the '70s, keeps your attention and Laurence Olivier is absolutely riveting. This is a terrific thriller, start to finish.

Marathon Man was widely hailed at the time of release, probably mainly for its determination to rectify and avenge some of the wrongdoings of WWII by letting the great Sir Laurence Olivier embody a dead ringer for Dr. Joseph Mengele, who along with other Nazi veterans were living in hiding in various South American countries at the time. And indeed it was and remains a watchable movie, spun around the classic 1970s paranoid thriller formula which often made films and narratives seem more promising and thought-out than they eventually revealed themselves to be.

As directed by the talented but not exactly visionary John Schlesinger, Marathon Man is a crude film filled with plot distortions and overamplified set pieces, many of which nonetheless work and suck you in. There is particularly one effective scene towards the end in which the antagonist is forced to face his past when recognized on the street. This is one of just a few moments when Olivier's performance comes to full effect and the film is hitting a real nerve (a task which is famously left to Olivier's character in other parts of the film). Both he and Hoffman go to great lengths with their characters, but unfortunately, they're not always getting the help they deserve from the script, which is muddled and inconsistent. To compensate, Schlesinger tries to engage us with blatant and aggressive cuts and scenes, borrowing Peckinpah's violence but not style, but if anything, they do more to accentuate than hide the film's recurring affectation.

John Schlesinger's 1976 classic about a graduate student in New York City who becomes the center of a mean old ex-Nazi war criminal dentist and the government's objective to throw him over. Dustin Hoffman provides us with an excellent performance as the 'Marathon Man'. He was almost forty when he played the role and with his acting skills he makes us believe he is actually a graduate student. Roy Scheider is perfect as Hoffman's crafty and slick older brother who works for the C.I.A. Scheider really does a lot with his role making him perhaps even the coolest character in the movie. Veteran Shakespearan actor Laurence Olivier gives an incredible performance as the evil ex-Nazi that rightfully earned him a Academy Award Nomination for Best Supporting Actor. John Schlesinger provides incendiary direction, and the screenplay is consistently engrossing and full of twists. If you are looking for one hell of a suspense flick with a lot of action you should definitely check out 'Marathon Man' at your local videostore. 'Marathon Man' should have earned Oscar nominations for -- Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor in a Leading Role - Dustin Hoffman, Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Laurence Olivier, Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Roy Scheider, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography and Best Film Editing. Watch out for the creepy 'dentist' scene. Grade: B+

Basically, I love this movie and was delighted to rent it from Netflix recently.

But my, how the cinema has changed in 30 years. William Goldman's screenplay is fine, the cinematography is excellent, the direction great, the acting wonderful. Still -- it could have easily been trimmed by at least 20 minutes. Everything up to the point where Babe is kidnapped and brought to meet Szell is atmosphere and suggestion. The awkward library scene with Marthe Keller is one in which I found myself making the "speed it up already" hand gesture at the screen. That and similar scenes dragged to the point of annoyance. Had I not been watching with someone who had never seen the picture before, I would have been using the fast-forward button. I now believe that the backstory of Babe's father as a victim of Senator McCarthy and House Un-American Activities Committee was superfluous and largely irrelevant to the audience, either now or then. And lastly, the entire convoluted story (especially as set in Paris) of Szell, the diamonds, and the questionable loyalties of the covert-ops crew is so muddled as to be little more than what Alfred Hitchcock called "The Maguffin" - the supposed "secret" that serves only to keep the audience on the edge of its seats.

Enough for the criticism. What I did like were : the scenes where Babe is in training for the marathon...how he keeps the image of Jesse Owens in his head for inspiration. This serves him well when he has to literally run for his life. Like 1997's THE EDGE, you have an unlikely hero. A peace-loving individualist who finally gets to the point of having to fight, and proves his own strength. I love the portrait of a scrappy New York City that is steadily fading away, especially after 9/11. I enjoyed the plot device wherein Babe enlists the aid of his punkish Puerto Rican neighbors and finally earns their respect.

Two other sequences stand out and stand the test of time: In the Diamond District where Szell is recognized by two former camp survivors, and of course, the final confrontation inside the pumping station, where Szell tries to call upon the evil within himself and is ultimately defeated by it. (I don't think that's a spoiler!...) Yes, it's a great movie...needs a bit of trimming, but worth a viewing, for sure.

THRILLER

Marathon runner and grad student Thomas "Babe" Levy (Dustin Hoffman) unknowingly crosses paths with Nazi (Lawrence Olivier) attempting to disguise himself as a regular citizen posing as a dentist, for the intention of retrieving some jewels. It was quite an effective chiller during it's time, from director John Schilsinger, especially the well-known drilling of the teeth scene that can be painful to even watch. Dentists were not too popular after the film's release this is part of the reason why. Roy Schneider also stars as Dustin Hoffman's brother Doc Levy as a government agent. Acting veteran received another Best Oscar nomination for this role. The second of 2 movies director John Schlesinger made with actor Dustin Hoffman.

Amidst the the early morning glare of the rising sun and whatever few others are up at this time, a young man jogs along the beaten track in an attempt to keep in shape. This, as he spots a fellow jogger and begins a fairly innocent 'chase', although the individual manages to outrun our young man to some pretty ominous music. The entire exchange is eventually inter-cut in a bizarre manner with some found footage of a marathon runner completely disconnected to the events we're witnessing. Marathon Man begins with this rather simplistic sequence of a young man jogging and very slowly turns what is an everyday activity, or an unspectacular image, into something that is quite sinister. It pitches the tone of the film perfectly, establishing an everyday guy and placing him in a sinister chase situation which it is discovered is so easily to get involved in, while systematically foreshadowing the eerie turns the narrative will take to do with having to run for one's life.

Marathon Man is like that; there's something very effective behind its ability to inject terror into a relatively routine situation. That very primal sense of 'running for one's life', whatever the situation, is tapped into perfectly by director John Schlesinger, who paints a bleak and uncomplimentary picture of New York City and of the scummy, lying and double-dealing lowlifes whom inhabit it. Amongst all of this is the character of Thomas Levy (Hoffman), nicknamed 'Babe', a student of history who is attempting to follow in his now deceased father's footsteps by engaging academically in the same field. Babe will later end up following in the same footsteps as his another family member; his brother Henry (Scheider), but for all the wrong reasons. Even Henry is referred to by his nickname for a lot of the film, that being 'Doc', thus repeating the process of use of an alias and tapping into that highly consistent theme of suspicion and what one's true identity is. In a film in which a lot of people act as if they're one thing in order to garner an advantage, this use of improper name and alias to act as an alter-ego is interesting.

But Marathon Man provides us with a ray of light in the form of Babe, a down to Earth and accessible lead with whom we are able to relate in his innocence and copious levels of naivety to his situation when espionage and betrayal catches up with him. In what might appear to be a complex and rather deep story revolving around said narrative characteristics of espionage, smuggling and spies; it is ironic that mere fate brings certain people to New York for certain reasons. This, when a stark disagreement between two elderly men about something that relates to times and events far deeper than mere road rage.

If Babe is a figure cut from a stone that shy but eager in his personality and traits, then Laurence Oliver's Christian Szell, a doctor well informed in the art of dentistry, represents the polar-opposite as this elderly and frail man, but someone who has made a life out of other people's sheer misery; a man that has seemingly existed to inflict pain and suffering wherever he's gone. When we first encounter him, he is a lonesome figure in a heavily fortified and secluded place of dwelling in the middle of a South American jungle. Several newspapers are scattered around, some in English; some in Spanish and some in German which establishes a sense of expertise in language, although the items that stand out are the uncanny skulls which line the shelves, most of which contain odd shaped teeth which catch our eye. The sequence informs us of a man whom requires security and isolation as well as someone whom is most probably trilingual. In one swooping camera shot, we are left to read into as much as we can about this one individual, while a lesser film of the thriller ilk would have seen a bunch of people gather in a room; brought Szell's face up on a screen and laid out everything for the uninformed characters and audience alike.

Babe's involvement in what it is he ends up neck deep in is ultimately instigated by the unsightly sequence in which the death of somebody we do not see coming occurs in his arms. The battered and bloodied body of a blade attack victim acting as the first truly pieces of shocking imagery Babe has seen, the blood from the body staining his plain, bright white vest that he wears thus staining him, and therefore linking him to the world the departing life was connected to. The film is a tight, gripping piece; a film that clashes a world of smuggling, deceit and murder with the quieter, more routine world of a young man who's nervous around girls and just attempting to make-good out of some pretty harsh living conditions.

It progresses to encompass a series of quite extraordinary sequences, the one of which everyone remembers more fondly than others being the torture sequence involving a dentist's drill, a sadomasochistic game of fear; terror; power play; ambiguous questions; honest but disbelieved answers and sheer pain. One other passage of play sees the lead running down a street in the early hours of the morning, whatever light there is being provided by way of the street lamps, as what we perceive to be a wailing, screeching musical score encompassing this, only for it to turn out to be an approaching ambulance which hurtles past, catching us all off guard. Marathon Man is a taut thriller, drawing its audience in and gripping them with a number of basic conventions, raging from the use of a mere MacGuffin to instilling a very visceral, very effective sense of fear by way of ambiguous character intentions and pure threat. If ever there was an essential thriller to see, it may well be Marathon Man.

I must admit that, albeit my being impartial at all time, New York City in the 70's is my weak spot from a photography standpoint and that's the second main reason why I was very pleased by this motion picture.

Dustin Hoffman is known by his fans as an excellent improviser on the movie set, a comment Schlesinger also made, and that makes him a standout compared to other big screen artists. That's what I loved the most about Marathon Man.

Hoffman is in his 40's in this movie however his young features and demeanor fit perfectly within the Columbia University PhD student profile, especially the one of a young man coming from a family of historians (I guess it was inevitable to pair up such a character with the movie plot). It was amazing seeing how such a cruel and intricate part of last century's history creeps up on Hoffman's role through his brother's sinister ties with some government agency and a Nazi on the run from South America to New York in the attempt to recuperate a fortune in diamonds. Somewhat predictable was instead Lawrence Olivier's (Szell) true identity discovery by a jeweler on West 47th Street, being that you certainly won't find Italians or Spaniards in that specific area..

Roy Scheider (The late Roy Scheider I have to say), as in many other roles he covered, was extremely thorough in his acting, with his very charming and stern looks as usual. He truly fit the international intrigue profile in his movie and I honestly have to say that no one else could have been a better choice for his part.

Wiliam Devane and Marther Keller were the icing on this bitter-sweet cake (I'll leave it up to the connoisseurs to understand what I mean by bitter-sweet) which melts perfectly under an even more bitter-sweet sunset seen from the New York City reservoir fences.

The high ratings for Marathon Man are no doubt focused on the substantial talent assembled to pull it off, and they succeed as long as one dispenses with every expectation of logic or common sense. Schlesinger builds substantial suspense, and there are plenty of satisfying scenes, but the plotting and story points are ridiculous beyond measure. This might not be a problem if it were any other type of picture, but the progressive unfolding of an initial puzzle to a somewhat sensible (or at least rational) set of revelations is one of the hallmarks of the government intelligence thriller. The story here, however, is so thin that virtually nothing happens for the entire first half of the picture, and the second half is really nothing more than one long chase sequence. The biggest problem is that the central objective of the action is precipitated by a murder that, if contemplated for more than about twenty seconds, reveals itself to make absolutely no sense whatsoever. And the illogical story points are not just structural. There are numerous details throughout that are obviously (and, to my mind, condescendingly) designed as mere conveniences for the the action, regardless of how inane or inexplicable they may be. The veneer of star power and sophisticated production values did not--for this viewer, at any rate--successfully obfuscate the movie's considerable flaws.