A grueling thriller of tension carried by Dustin Hoffman chased by an extraordinary and terrifying Laurence Olivier as a former Nazi war criminal, “Marathon Man” is one of the greatest films of the genre. Watch on Paramount+
Babe Levy, a recent college graduate and marathon runner, leads an investigation to find the identity of her missing father. These investigations plunge him, despite himself, into the merciless world of international intrigues; universe where old Nazis and troubled agents gravitate…
If we set aside the documentaries – often quite remarkable – devoted to former Nazi war criminals, their hunts and/or their trials (let’s cite Hotel Terminus, devoted to Klaus Barbie; A Specialist, devoted to the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961, kidnapped in Buenos Aires…), the hunt and the run of former Nazis has been the subject of numerous fictions.
And among them is an extraordinary film: Marathon Man. A grueling thriller of tension pitting, under the direction of John Schlesinger, two top actors: Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier.
Three years before These Boys Who Came from Brazil in which Laurence Olivier hunted down former Nazi war criminals, he plays an extraordinary and terrifying Dr. Szell in John Schlesinger’s masterpiece; former dentist in a concentration camp, forced to leave his refuge in Uruguay to recover his war treasure once entrusted to his brother.
His character is, of course, strongly inspired by the sinister Joseph Mengele, nicknamed “the angel of death”, who was the chief SS doctor at Auschwitz, and died accidentally in 1979 in Brazil where he had found refuge. after the war.
A paranoid thriller very anchored in its time, the film masterfully combines all the anxieties, traumas and uncertainties of the country for more than a decade, from the Vietnam War to Watergate via the Kennedy assassination… Without forgetting a sequence of dental torture carried out on Dustin Hoffman, putting the nerves to the test, which largely contributed to arousing the anxiety of dental roulette…
Marathon Manto see (or rewatch!) on Paramount+.
