Marathon Man (1976)

Marathon Man
Directed by John Schlesinger
Written by William Goldman from his novel
1976/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Christian Szell: Relief…. Discomfort. Now which of these I next apply? That decision is in your hands. So… take your time… and tell me… is it safe?

Sir Laurence Olivier is the shining light in this otherwise murky thriller.

Babe Levy (Dustin Hoffman) is a graduate history student and trains for the marathon in his off hours.  He has a brother Doc Levy (Roy Scheider) whom he believes is an oil company executive.  In fact, he is a secret agent who pursues Nazi war criminals.  He has used former concentration camp dentist Dr. Christian Szell (Olivier) as an informer on other fugitives on condition of immunity.

After Christian’s brother is killed in New York in a road rage accident with a Jew, Doc spirits him from South America to the U.S.   Doc immediately starts having potentially fatal encounters with various assassins.  After his demise, all these people begin to focus on Babe who knows absolutely nothing about the back story.

Babe receives the same kind of treatment meted out to his brother ending with dental torture by the good doctor himself.  The rest of the film pits the two against each other in other arenas as well.  With William De Vane as a government agent.

The plot is convoluted or maybe I should have been paying better attention.  Anyway it’s one of those movies that doesn’t let you in on the whole plot until the very end.  In this case, the ending wasn’t a surprise and the format didn’t really let you get invested in the characters.  That’s except for bad-guy Olivier.  He’s excellent throughout and especially during the iconic dental scene.

Laurence Olivier was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar.