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The reunion of Dustin Hoffman and British director John Schlesinger after their extraordinary Midnight Cowboy, Marathon Man is in a somewhat different vein from the Oscar-winning drama. As a suspenseful thriller with some startling bouts of violence, it's a superbly gripping, mysterious and occasionally disturbing watch. The title refers to the fact that Hoffman's central character, Babe, is a marathon runner, but other than the fact that he runs a fair bit during the narrative, it has little actual bearing on the plot. The film starts in quite a fractured manner, cutting between a road rage incident in New York which leaves two elderly men dead in a car crash, a student running through Central Park (Hoffman), and a mysterious American government agent in Paris (Rob Scheider). At first these threads seem to have little relevance to one another, but one of the film's greatest achievements is how it sustains a brilliant level of intrigue even before it is at all clear as to what is happening, and then connects the strands satisfyingly.
Without revealing too much, it soon becomes clear that the events rotate around a former Nazi scientist, Christian Szell, who since the war has been living a reclusive life in hiding in Uruguay, but is forced to travel to America for initially unclear reasons. Szell is played with understated menace by the veteran Laurence Olivier, who is truly chilling, playing a character based on the real-life Nazi "Angel of Death" Josef Mengele, who infamously carried out horrific experiments on concentration camp prisoners. Marathon Man's most famous scene involves Olivier, Hoffman, a chair and some dental implements, and it's certainly not for the fainthearted, although most of the actual interrogation occurs off-screen. (The scene went through numerous revisions after test screenings suggested that it was just too horrific for 1970s audiences, and is probably the main reason for the film's UK 18 certificate.) Olivier was ill at the time and had not been offered many film roles, but he repaid the producers' faith with a deservedly Oscar-nominated performance.
Sadly the film does fall into the trap, so often encountered by thrillers, of having a set-up that is more compelling than the outcome. The potential of the wonderfully atmospheric, enigmatic first half is not quite delivered upon; as the plot reveals itself, its fascinating complexity is diminished, and it ends in a slightly pat and conventional showdown. But this is not to say that it does not remain completely gripping and intelligently written, populated by interesting and developed characters. William Goldman's erudite screenplay (based on his own novel) and some uncredited polishing by Chinatown's Robert Towne combine with Schlesinger's superb eye for capturing life in the Big Apple which he exhibited previously in Midnight Cowboy. The visual texture and realism add to the foreboding and sometimes incredibly tense ambience, which mean that the film delivers thrills in spades.
The extras
After a glance at the DVD sleeve you'd be forgiven for thinking this is a vanilla disc, as the extras are only mentioned in ridiculously small text, but there is in fact about an hour of content. A vintage featurette presented by playboy producer Bob Evans is more interesting than its cringeworthy title "The Magic of Hollywood... Is the Magic of People" suggests, and better still is the retrospective featurette involving interviews with the living key players (including the late Roy Scheider, as the featurette was made in 2000). Twenty minutes of rehearsal footage is of mild interest, and the package is rounded out by the theatrical trailer. The picture quality of the main feature is a tad murky and blurry when there is fast motion, but it's serviceable overall.
The summary
Consistently engaging and compellingly mysterious, Marathon Man is the thinking man's thriller. It's typical of Hollywood in the 1970s: populist entertainment with real substance.
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