Marathon Man

Marathon Man (1976) is easily the best of the '70s ex-Nazi thrillers (The Boys from Brazil, The Odessa File). Best-remembered for doing to the dentist's chair what Psycho did to the shower, John Schlesinger and William Goldman craft a stylish, exciting film, combining a gripping story with a top-notch cast.

Thomas "Babe" Levy (Dustin Hoffman) is a New York grad student who gets unwittingly mixed up in a case of international intrigue. Turns out his brother Doc (Roy Scheider) is a government agent with ties to Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier), a Nazi war criminal hiding in South America. A car accident in New York City brings Szell out of hiding, fearing his cache of diamonds is at risk. Because of Doc's unsavory associations, Babe becomes a target of Szell's scheming.

Marathon Man is a cleverly-plotted thrill ride, with Schlesinger's assured direction and Goldman's well-crafted script. The assured plotting and detailed characterizations make the requisite twists and revelations organic and clever. The film never lacks for creative set-pieces: the random car accident that sets the plot in motion, Doc's fight with a hulking assassin, Szell's paranoid walk through Manhattan's East Side ("Der Weise Engel!"). My favorite scene has Babe paying a gang of street thugs to rob his apartment (and distract his pursuers). And of course there's Szell's impromptu surgery on Babe, a scene that still inspires cringes.

A lot of recent movies try and put an "Everyman" protagonist in harm's way, leading to gaping credibility problems: is Transformers anything but a teenaged nerd's fantasy? In comparison, Babe Levy is extremely credible: he's athletic, smart and competent with a gun, but his heroics remain within the realm of plausibility. Coupled with his trouble past (his father was blacklisted by McCarthy) and a deceptively sweet romance with Ilse (Marthe Keller), he becomes a well-rounded and sympathetic hero. It helps that he's not facing impossible odds, his adversaries a grandfatherly old man and a few garden-variety thugs, and that their motive isn't world domination but simple greed.

Dustin Hoffman is in full-on Method mode, playing a particularly intense yet believable hero. Laurence Olivier gives his best late-career performance, making Szell a paragon of quiet, understated menace. Roy Scheider (Jaws) is excellent, though he exits the film way too early. William Devane's (Family Plot) duplicity is never in doubt but the lovely Marthe Keller makes an unlikely traitor. Reliable thugs Marc Lawrence (The Ox-Bow Incident) and Richard Bright (The Godfather) play Szell's henchmen, Fritz Weaver cameos as a professor and Jacques Marin (Charade) turns up as a Paris jeweler.

Marathon Man stands tall as another fine thriller from the '70s. Coupling a smart script with excellent performances and assured direction, it's a highpoint of its genre.