The Boys from Brazil | | Cast : | Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier, James Mason | | Director : | Franklin J. Schaffner | | Studio : | Artisan Entertainment | | Format : | Color, Widescreen | | Released Date : | January 01, 1978 | | DVD Released Date : | May 11, 2004 | | Language : | English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 02, 2005 | | Summary | "Zend in ZE Clones!", or, They Saved Hitler's DNA | Content
 | It's a dreary, rainy Sunday afternoon, Monday is lurking around the corner, and you're feeling a little blue. What to watch to lift those sodden spirits?
If you're like me, you should immediately pop "The Boys from Brazil" into the hopper, sit back with a big bowl of extra-buttery popcorn, and you'll cheer up in no time.
Director Franklin Shaffner pulls out all the stops in this delicious 1970's romp, uses all the tricks at his disposal to concoct and serve up a steaming, hardy serving of Nazi conspiracy mongering deep in modern day South America.
It's a perfect day at the races. Don't believe me? You want it, "Boys from Brazil" has it, including:
*Nasty monocole-wearing Nazis? Check!
*Gene-splicing dastardly plotting? Check!
*Gratuituous German shepherds? Check!
*Super secret Nazi balls to which, evidently, the entirety of South American civil society has been invited to? Check!
*Defenestration of midget servant boys? Check!
Shaffner mixes all of this up and garnishes this well-seasoned little dish with ample amounts of the red sauce, killer attack Dobermans, a small army of sneering little clones, and gratuitous amounts of both Lawrence Olivier and Gregory Peck chewing up the scenery like starving men at an All-you-can-Eat Buffet.
And what a tasty and well-stocked buffet it is: "The Boys from Brazil" gets to work immediately and plunges its arms deep into its tale of young Jewish Nazi-hunters (one of whom is played by Steve Guttenberg) on the trail of infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, now escaped to Paraguay and meeting with SS officers to brew up an insidious plot.
Gregory Peck has the time of his career playing the wicked, moustachioed, banana-yellow tie & white sear-sucker suit-wearing Mengele, barking orders, rolling his R's, making midgets cower, yowling invective at an improbably ugly SS wife, and generally having great fun.
And what high-cheese Nazi hunt would be complete without Sir Lawrence Olivier, who plays veteran Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman, who gets drawn into all the fun from semi-retirement in Vienna, Austria?
Franklin Schaffner was a high-powered Hollywood director who had helmed some mega-hits and a few classics, including "Planet of the Apes", "Nicholas and Alexandra", and "Patton", and he plays it straight in "The Boys from Brazil", rounding out an impressive ensemble of serious actors with a Jerry Goldsmith score (solid, but sounding like something Strauss might have composed had he done his composing from the inside of an insane asylum).
But it's all to no avail: much like "Dreamcatchers" did with Larry Kasdan, "Boys from Brazil" gets away from its director, zagging when it should zig, taking on a life of its own, and as a result the movie is a hoot and completely, and unintentionally, hysterical.
For one thing, Olivier's performance is so over-the-top as to constitute self-parody---and yet it works! On the bad-guy side, despite the inclusion of staid veteran actors like James Mason and Walter Gotell (the elegant, understated German actor who played Soviet General Gogol in the bond films)ideally to serve as ballast on Peck, the man digs in to his role like a Frenchman with a slab of brie---you *roll* those R's, Gregory! With that in mind, what do you get with this little Wagner-goes-Samba potboiler?
*See Gregory Peck stomping around in banana-yellow tie, white suit, and (occasionaly) booties, screaming profanity at underlings! See Peck get all mushy over fond memories of vivisection and genetic experimentation!
*See Peck and Nazi-Hunter Olivier in a bare-fisted, no-holds-brawl that would make Mike Tyson blush, complete with neck clawing eyeball gouging, and arm-biting!
*See a full-bodied Nazi celebration at a Paraguayan hotel, replete with drum-beating Hitler youth and Adolf Hitler banners!
*See an exposition sequence that makes the DNA-splicing segment in "Jurassic Park" look nimble and deft!
*See a sneering international army of snotty little clones (played to nerve-twitching perfection by child-actor Jeremy Black, born ahead of his time---a shame, too, he would have been a natural for the Annakin Skywalker role in "Star Wars: Episode 1") stomp around and bully their parents and anyone else who gets in the way!
*And best of all, see Uta Hagen get her dander up and prove that Olivier is outgunned when it comes to chewing scenery!
"The Boys from Brazil" is a hearty serving of Bavarian cheese with a side-order of cheese, but fortunately this little excursion is helmed by professionals: good pacing, good direction, good cinematography, competent acting, and a score that complements the action---and best of all, "Boys" delivers on its premise with both barrels, and isn't afraid to skimp on the red sauce.
If you've ever wanted to see Gregory Peck rolling around on the floor with Laurence Olivier in a kind of 1970-s version of "Bumfights", this is the movie for you.
JSG |
| Rating | | | Date | July 03, 2005 | | Summary | An intriguing thriller about human cloning | Content
| "The Boys from Brazil" (1978 - 123 minutes) is an intriguing and a present-day thriller about human cloning directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, based on the Ira Levin's book. Twenty years before the birth of the sheep Dolly, the actor Gregory Peck plays the doctor Josef Mengele, nazi who lived refugee between Brazil and Paraguay carrying out genetic experiences. The story begins when 65 years old men started to die in various countries. A famous and obstinate nazi hunter, Ezra Lieberman [the actor Laurence Olivier], is alerted to the fact by a young American investigator and starts an investigation that will decipher a mysterious conspiracy. 94 clones of Adolf Hitler had been created and sent to families who had the same characteristics of the nazi dictator family: parents profession, father who dies at the age of 65 years old, only son. The film shows an insane Mengele in his house in the Amazon Forest where, with the help of other survivors of the Third Reich, he commands a tenebrous project that was initiated when clones of Hitler were made from preserved sanguine cells. A scene that deserves prominence is the one where the scientist Professor Bruckner [the actor Bruno Ganz] shows how is the laboratory development of all the cloning process. The Professor standes out that "it is not enough the cloning of an individual to turn him into a Mozart or a Picasso, the environmental background also must be reproduced".
The unquestionable and irremediable advance of the biological sciences, particularly the genetic engineering, turns out perfectly viable today what was before considered mere science fiction.
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| Rating | | | Date | November 19, 2004 | | Summary | This is the worst movie ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! | Content
| I watched this movie in school, and I hated it!!! First of all, there's so many disgusting pictures, like naked people! (ewwww...) Towards the end of the movie, there's a part where two men fights against each other. One of them bit the other one's ear! Then there's three dogs biting a person until the person is died... I am totally grossed out!!!!!!!!!! I've watched another movie called Charlie. While I was watching it, I fell asleep. It was bored to death. I've never fell asleep while watching a movie before, so I thought this will be the worst movie. But not anymore! The Boy From Brazil is the worst movie now! It sucked! I don't ever want to watch it ever AGAIN!!!!!!! |
| Rating | | | Date | September 22, 2004 | | Summary | The Boys Are Back In Town | Content
| Gregory Peck, playing out-of-type, one-dimensional, and over the top is the highlight of THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL as Josef Mengele (quite a turn-around considering he had just played General MacArthur in MACARTHUR a year before). Mengele/Peck is overseeing a plot to clone and produce hundreds of little "Hitlers" and to find the future leader for the hibernating Nazi's. Ezra Lieberman (in an equally great performance from Laurence Olivier) is a Nazi hunter on the trail of Mengele to stop the conspiracy (this character is quite a turnaround equal to Peck as Olvier played an escape Nazi war criminal in MARATHON MAN two years before). The cloning aspect of the story is quite daring for its day and resonates implications of ethics of today's headlines. Also, the film asks the age old question if a person's personality is a result of inherited genes or outside environmental factors. Overall, a film which fits in well with some of the other 1970's paranoid thrillers with the right mixture of action, mystery and suspense. Note: Look for a young Steve Guttenberg (POLICE ACADEMY) in a very early film role as the young Nazi Hunter (Barry Kohler). He is somehow exposed and killed by Mengele's henchmen. Notice the scene following his death, he is in the background (as Mengele/Peck is in the foreground) sitting on the floor slumped against the wall. Guttenberg can be seen blinking when his character is supposed to be dead. |
| Rating | | | Date | September 13, 2004 | | Summary | HG Wells' 1896 "Dr. Moreau" as real life Dr. Mengele!!! Wow! | Content
| This film gets 4 stars instead of 3 because it is STILL so timely...
It is "campy", and one would think the key villain (Peck's Dr. Mengele) rather overacted and unbelievably bad, but current science news makes him even more believable now...
as we inch towards human cloning...and as we debate the ethics of human genetics...you know..."adult" vs. "embryonic" stem cells, etc. etc.
Yes, Virginia, there was a real life Dr. Moreau (the fictional HG Wells evil scientist). Fact --or at least probable science advances in the fairly near future---imitates fiction in this film.
Who is our real life 20th Century Dr. Moreau? His name was Dr. Josef Mengele, Nazi concentration camp doctor of death. (the real life Mengele died shortly after this film came out. Wonder if he saw it or read the book???).
And he was an evil scientist who tortured, maimed, murdered prisoners all in the name of Nazi "science". (Shades of the movie "Frankenstein" here also!!!)
In Well's story, The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) Deformed humans are scattered on his little island paradise.
In the film Boys from Brazil, look at the persons "littered" around Dr. Mengele's hidden jungle laboratory. Shades of Moreau!!!
Observe the young native boy---with eyes dyed blue. (Nazi Dr. Mengele actually attempted to dye brown eyes blue in his quest for the genetically engineered "master" race.)
And the man who discovers Dr. M's secret abuses of science runs to inform civilization...just as the amateur Nazi hunter does in The Boys from Brazil.
Herein lies the tale, as the elderly Nazi hunter (played by Olivier) takes up the chase...when the young Nazi hunter is murdered...
Gregory Peck shaved part of his eyebrows and grew a sinister pencil thin moustache (see films of 30's & 40's for villains with similar pencil thin moustaches). Good idea. He played so many good guys---this alteration makes him look different & evil.
Peck & James Mason (as an elegant, cultured Nazi who shares the Mengele and evil Nazi vision of genetics) would not be quite believable in their cultured but quite evil villain parts--- except for the fact that they accurately reflect the historic DESIRES of actual Nazi geneticists to make genetics serve their evil purposes.
Mason's evil villain character is more subtle---a genteel, cultured man who is entranced by music. Watch as he closes his eyes & is enchanted by the great classical music. His graceful hands "direct' the recorded music...
but he is as evil as the more abrasive Mengele & commends Mengele's cloning work "Someday schoolchildren will visit this (laboratory)."
CAUTION Preview this movie to mark scenes to skip.
In my quest to view as few hacked up, abused women as possible, I skip a scene where a British young woman is murdered & also recommend skipping (or fast forwarding) thru a scene by the science lab because of female nudity. The plot is unaffected by these gratuitous scenes which were cut from the TV version I saw.
Also, there are some rather violent death scenes. Preview before allowing kids under 17 year olds to see it.
However, much of the movie is a good discussion base for dramatizing some of the evil ways science, particularly genetics & cloning can be abused.
I didn't tell you who the 94 boys from Brazil are...That's the scary secret you will discover for yourself.
(Ps remember: someday we might clone---from just a strand of old hair!!!)
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