Review of Marathon Man (1976) by Alvin Y — 22 May 2011

Go ahead and poke "Marathon Man" to see if it's dead -- just don't go acting shocked that it bites back. And here I'm wondering: what happened to Dustin Hoffman? The dude's talent is crazy. Check him out in his prime in John Schlesinger's paranoid fable "Marathon Man" as Babe Levy, the cheeky frat boy heir of a suicidal patriarch with some seriously dark issues. Only brother Doc (Roy Scheider, most likely post-grad of of a lost war movie where bullets are bronzers) seems hip to dad's secrets, and the shit's about to hit the fan. Doc is bled dry by cronies of Nazi dentist Szell (wait for it), played by Laurence Olivier. Doc makes the final blow, though. He limps to Babe's New York apartment to dish his father's espionage, but hits the floor before his bro gets an earful. Szell thinks Doc dropped a bomb on Babe about who's been fondling his diamonds. Talk about hot water.

Coming down Hoffman's "Graduate" and "Midnight Cowboy" peak, "Marathon Man" is as embedded to the time and happenings as any film buff could ask for. Schlesinger knows it without creating excess. So does Hoffman. He runs track like there's no tomorrow, because there might not be. He also makes good on wooing beatnik Elsa (Marthe Keller), which serves only to draw further conflict into his life. But that's just in the big picture. Screenwriter William Goldman, working from his novel of the same name, finds torture in the constant delay of Babe's troubles. Around every corner there's cover-up and quiet reveal you'll miss if you don't attention, plunging "Marathon Man" deeper and deeper into its own baked conspiracies. It's a slow burn, but it stings. When the camera pulls away on disguise, there's no room to relax and turn back on a character's change of face. As Michael Small's techy score would scare you to believe, the bad guys are still there waiting.