Marathon Man

 3/4

Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, Roy Scheider, Marthe Keller, William Devane

Rated R (probable for Intense Violence, Language, and a Scene of Sexuality/Nudity)

"Marathon Man" is what critics call a "turn off your brain" kind of movie.  It's the kind of movie that offers cheap, visceral thrills as long as the audience member doesn't use their thinking machine.  Plot holes abound and characters act like either Sherlock Holmes or Bill and Ted depending on what the story requires.   A cast of solid performers and energetic direction can smooth over a lot of the seams, but this is not a well-written motion picture.

Babe (Hoffman) is a young graduate student at Columbia who is about to start his dissertation.  He is wooing a pretty student named Elsa (Keller).  His brother Doc (Scheider) is in the oil business and has just shown up in town to surprise Babe.  But Doc isn't who he says he is.  He's actually a government agent in town to apprehend a notorious Nazi war criminal (Olivier) who is in town to pick up a sizable collection of diamonds.

The first half is the film's weakest.  A thriller like this must tread a fine line and give the audience the necessary information without revealing too much.  Director John Schlesinger doesn't find the correct balance.  As a result, the characters seem to know more than we do.  Schlesinger also spends too much time setting up Babe's relationships with Doc and Elsa.  While all three of the leads give effective performances, a little of this goes a long way.  This isn't a French family drama.

Once Schlesinger finishes this material, however, the film takes off.  Hardly a minute goes by when Babe isn't being chased or otherwise in danger.  Unfortunately, the screenplay flies off the deep end.  Babe and everyone else are constantly doing things that don't make sense, are contrived or or mind-bogglingly stupid.  Considering all the danger that he is in, it's indefensible that not once does it occur to Babe to call the cops.  And that's just the start.

In a rare turn of events, producer Robert Evans got the all the actors he wanted for the lead roles: Hoffman, Olivier, Scheider and Keller.  Hoffman digs into his bag of tricks and gives his character enough quirks to make Babe seem like a real person as opposed to the prototypical everyman who is in over his head.  He has a nice brotherly relationship with Roy Scheider.  Laurence Olivier, who nearly couldn't star in the film because he was battling cancer at the time, manages to be sinister and pathetic.  He makes to make his most infamous line ("Is it safe?") sound chilling every time he says it.  He's so good that one wouldn't know that he was sick at the time (if only the same could be said for his awful turn in "Clash of the Titans").  Or that the actor was English rather than German.  Marthe Keller is and effective love interest.  William Devane, who was poised for stardom at the time, is perfectly creepy.

If nothing else, "Marathon Man" is notorious for its torture scene, where the villainous doctor uses his dental expertise to inflict severe pain on Babe.  While not visually explicit, it leaves enough to the imagination that I could almost feel the pain in my own teeth.  I thought of the meme that is going around on Facebook where a person's tooth has been cut in half with nail clippers and then bites into ice cream.  This scene has the same effect.

One thing that did bother me is its use of Nazism and the Holocaust in the service of cheap thrills.  I'm not saying that this subject matter can be the basis for a thriller ("Black Book" did just that), but if a film is going to use it, it's going to have to take it more seriously.  I don't feel that "Marathon Man" crosses the line into being offensive, but it comes close.

This is one of those movies where a film's reputation outstrips its actual value.  It isn't the classic that some make it out to be.  In fact, it's not especially memorable.  But it has a lot of energy and a macabre sense of humor.