Review of Marathon Man (1976) by Steven R — 15 Oct 2009

This is really a film of two halves. The first half is largely inconsequential, un-compelling tosh. It consists of little vignettes and scenes which simply set up what happens later, and a lot of the threads that are introduced aren't fully resolved. Right up until the dental scene, Dustin Hoffman is just playing the same tired stereotype that he did in The Graduate; an unconfident student who is borderline autistic and hopeless with women. The scene where he is trying to convince the graduate student to go out with him is very two-dimensional, so that we are bemused when they sleep together shortly afterwards and we don't care when they get mugged.

If you're going to make a thriller with political pretensions and characters switching sides - in the case of William Devane, several times - then you can't leave the audience out of the loop for the whole first hour and then expect them to catch up and tie up the loose ends for themselves. It would have been much better if the film had started with Laurence Olivier getting off the plane, intercut with Hoffman running. The script could then have gradually explained their characters and purpose without resorting to the kind of much-too-rapid exposition when Dustin is being driven away in the car.

In the second half, things get much better. After the dental scene Olivier starts to inhabit Szell a lot more, and you go from having a chuckle at his bald cap and glasses to being slightly frightened by him. As Szell walks through the Jewish community trying to get his diamonds valued, you can feel the hate coming off him, and his desperation at being recognised by the elderly woman. The final showdown between him and Dustin, however, is a little over-the-top, especially Szell's death scene having fallen down the spiral staircase (which was clearly done by a stunt double, considering how ill Olivier was at the time). It clearly demonstrates that the two conventions of acting they embodied don't sit well together, with Olivier coming off a ham and Dustin a stereotype.

It's not a terrible film by any means; it?s very nicely shot with some good composition, the musical cues work very well and Roy Scheider puts in a great performance as Babe's brother Doc, showing that there's more to him than just Jaws. However this could have worked a lot better had it been only 90 minutes long.