Marathon Man | | Cast : | Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, Roy Scheider | | Director : | John Schlesinger | | Studio : | Paramount Studio | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | October 08, 1976 | | DVD Released Date : | August 13, 2002 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), French (Dubbed), English (Original Language), French (Original Language), English (Subtitled) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | June 12, 2005 | | Summary | No. The nerve here is almost dead. I want a new one. | Content
 | The amazing thing about Marathon Man (MM) is that it's still scary thirty years later. There's a certain style of these late '60's early to mid 70's movies. So some quick observations.
The war in Vietnam had left everyone distrustful of the government. Perhaps not so much the President (although we should have) but the President's men (Haldemann, Erlichmann, Magruder, Mitchell) and certainly the alphabet agencies. See for example Condor where Cliff Robertson is like Roy Scheider (Doc), hard working, loyal, manly, faithful . . . well, maybe not quite. French Connection. Bullit. The Dirty Harry series. It's the land of shadowy agencies.
Secondly, there's sex. There's a lot of sex in these movies because . . . we could have sex now. Naked guys and girls. People falling in love or at least heavy like, and jumping in the sack.
Thirdly, there's the horror of WWII that was only a generation away. So when Dr. Christian Szell (Olivier) ends up in the diamond district, some of the survivors of Dachau, Treblinka and Auschwitz recognize him. I didn't see it the first time but that might of been a good ending as well, i.e. Babe (Hoffman) misses the appointment to stop him but Szell is torn apart by the crowd.
What are the movies that explode in this new freedom of expression? Well. For me they are Five Easy Pieces, Dog Day (one of the all time best), Butch and Sundance, French Connection, Body Heat (Whew. Maybe the best), Godfather I and II, Postman (remake) Easy Rider (maybe for the soundtrack), the above mentioned Three Days of the Condor, Bullit and Cukoo's Nest. There's a lot more. Those are my favorites, and of course, MM.
So much to read in these films from that decade. So much left unsaid. Great directors. You know you got the feeling (OK, going out on a limb here) that they weren't interested in the $. It really was art. You might not like it but it wasn't an investment project. The movie was run by directors and actors, not lawyers and CPAs. 5 stars. Larry Scantlebury |
| Rating | | | Date | June 09, 2005 | | Summary | One of Schlesinger's Better Movies | Content
| Made from William Goldman's novel, MARATHON MAN is a very good thriller movie, the sort of thing that the fine director John Schlesinger did very well indeed. Although the film was released almost ten years after THE GRADUATE, Dustin Hoffman in some of the scenes looks as youthful as he did in that film and sometimes he lapses into the same speech patterns as he used in THE GRADUATE. You half way expect Mrs. Robinson to walk into the room at any time. Roy Scheider and William Devane give respectable performances, but the best acting has to be that of the great Laurence Olivier who plays the Nazi Christian Szell for which he was nominated for an Academy Award.
Olivier's torture scene with the dental equipment is as chilling the third time I saw this movie as it was the first. The scene of course is a classic and not to be missed.
For this sort of movie, MARATHON MAN is about as good as they come. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 18, 2005 | | Summary | A Triumph of Urban Paranoia, Atmosphere, and Suspense | Content
| After reading and loving William Goldman's brilliant novel, I first saw MARATHON MAN (MM) in its initial theatrical release when I was 13 years old, and the years haven't diminished its power for me. Sure, the plot gets a little more convoluted than it absolutely needs to be, but in a way it's because Goldman's screen adaptation (with a little uncredited tweaking by Robert Towne) takes into account the all-too-human character flaws of his heroes and villains, and the mistakes people make when they're fearful and paranoid. The stellar cast, from Dustin Hoffman's Babe Levy, the nebbishy grad student-turned-avenger (you'd never know he was pushing 40 in real life) to Marthe Keller's vulnerable femme fatale Elsa to Oscar nominee Sir Laurence Olivier's imperious, coolly evil Christian Szell to William Devane's slick, shadowy agent Janeway, are uniformly superb, with Roy Scheider deserving a place in The Suave Hall of Fame for his portrayal of Doc Levy, a.k.a. government agent "Scylla." If Scheider hadn't been so charismatic and engaging, Doc's murder in mid-film wouldn't have such impact, and the movie would suffer for it. As powerful as the cast, script, and John Schlesinger's direction are, however, I think the special secret ingredient that gives MM its punch is its atmosphere. The naturalistic, sometimes washed-out color palette almost lends the film a black-and-white film noir look. Almost every person in the film is angry, cynical, emotionally wounded, and/or generally negative in some way. And what really struck me was that onscreen, it seems like chaos and disaster are exploding all over the world. Look at the riots and bombings taking place in France in early scenes with Doc and Janeway (nicely subtle homosexual subtext there, by the way). Also, if you listen carefully to newscasts in the background, you'll notice there's nothing but bad news: murders, suicides, all kinds of violence all over (including the "chicken" game between the old Jew and Szell's brother as the film begins). MM is by no means a happy film -- even when our hero wins, he's already lost so much his victory seems hollow indeed -- but it never fails to grab and haunt me each time I watch it. If you love the film, you'll want to own the DVD not only for the superb letterboxed print, but also for the terrific extras, including both new and vintage making-of documentaries with Hoffman, Scheider, Keller, Goldman, producer Robert Evans and other major MM players, as well as rare rehearsal footage and the original theatrical trailer.
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| Rating | | | Date | January 09, 2005 | | Summary | Is it Safe? | Content
| One of the best thrillers ever made. Period. The Marathon Man, The Godfather 1 & 2, The Deer Hunter, Close Encounters of the third Kind, Star Wars, Animal House, French Connection, Apocolypse Now, etc, etc. Filmed during the time when filmakers were known as artists and filmaking was called an art. That has all changed now in conservative Hollywood, where filmakers are now known as profiteers and filmaking is called a business. These days, the studio honchos know that if you just put a high paying actor/actress in a high budget film with a decent script...it'll work. Who needs a great script or good reviews when the film is grossing over $100 million or more at the box office. Right? |
| Rating | | | Date | November 08, 2004 | | Summary | One of my top 200 cult movies ! | Content
| The opening sequence in which we watch two old man discussing and offending one each other in the middle of New York City is terrific .
You will find a lot of excitement in this passionate thriller about double agents and elderly Nazis . The script is heavy puzzled and the violence spills very often along the film but at the end you gratify this entry .
Olivier plays a cruel dentist who will torture Dustin Hoffman making famous the expression : Isn't it safe? such as an operatic obstinate .
And the rest runs for you my dear reader . Based on William Goldman 's novel.
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