Marathon Man
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Movie Reviews of Marathon Man
Movie Review: 3 stars out of 4
Summary: 4 Stars
The Bottom Line:
Though the movie does not make as much sense after the fact as it does while watching it, Marathon Man offers a number of excellent scenes held together by convincing performances and post-Watergate paranoia
Movie Review: MARATHON MAN
Summary: 4 Stars
The movie is still as exciting as when it was first released 30 years ago. And yes, the tooth drilling is still there. I had fun this time reading the technical errors on www.indb.com and looking for them. Great movie.Movie Review: Marathon Man - Good 1976 Movie Worth Buying
Summary: 4 Stars
Another 1970's suspenseful thriller movie worth buying and watching. Many great actors; Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, William Devane, Roy Scheider, to name several.Movie Review: Questions on Video Aspect Switch Cools Rating
Summary: 3 Stars
Sad to read about the problems with the (I think, Region 2) DVD in the UK that Derek Marriott wrote about earlier, about the 5- minute gap.... It seems like some kind of conspiracy about this film, because the Region 1 version begins and ends in wide screen of at least 2:1 (I would say near letterbox) but noticed that the credit roll only shows the true "letterbox"; following the credits for the director until right after Hoffman throws the gun in the water, the format changes to about 1.85:1. It seems like Paramount is trying to please everyone by trying to compromise with the screen format -- the movie isn't completely pan and scan while its current presentation doesn't yield too much black bar space on the television like a letterboxed film would. I have yet to give the movie a rating but will have made a decision by the end, because I still have to weigh what seems to be happening with the original film aspect ratio. Is Paramount Home Video trying to find a sly way to save money? All they had to do was press a dual- sided DVD to give people a pan & scan on one side and a letterboxed version on the other. Somewhere this makes no sense, because a filmmaker wouldn't change formats like this in 1976 just to accomodate the titles. Would they? Watch what happens immediately following the credit for director John Schlesinger, which is layered over the detail of Hoffman's feet running while at a screen aspect ratio of 2:1 or more -- take the title off and the scene changes to a frontal shot of Hoffman running and the screen size expands to 1.78:1 or 1.85:1. I just don't see any point that a filmmaker would flip-flop on formats while creating a film. The quality of the video transfer looked fine. On my screen (I purchased it yesterday), the colors seemed a bit subdued with the exception of the nighttime fountain scene with Roy Scheider. This could be just what Schlesinger intended. The contrast and blacks seemed fine and dark details didn't seem to exhibit any excessive digital artifacts. I didn't recognize any dust specs or foreign matter one usually would see from a film this old -- it looked like it just came out of the processor. There were some nice additions in the DVDs extras. If there weren't a decent amount of extras, I would have given it a snub.
Movie Review: A prime example of the way highly styled entertainment should be...
Summary: 3 Stars
Schlesinger made a great action-suspense film and married it to the artistry of unique talents... Hoffman was, by then, a dynamic, young and incredibly versatile film actor with three Academy Award nominations already under his belt for "The Graduate," "Midnight Cowboy," and "Lenny."
But the key to "Marathon Man" was the chemistry between its stars... Perhaps one of the most gut-wrenching and most memorable scenes in the film comes when Hoffman is captured and tortured by Olivier who plays the role of a mean and vicious and sadistic Nazi war criminal, Christian Szell... Olivier's performance resulted in a 1976 Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor...
In 1945, Szell ran the experimental camp at Auschwitz where they called him the White Angel... He was a dentist and could provide escape for any Jew who was willing to pay the price... He started out with gold, naturally, but very quickly worked his way up to diamonds...
As Szell saw the end early, he sneaked his brother into America with the diamonds... And they were right here, in New York, in a safe deposit-box until Szell's brother got killed in a head-on collision with an oil truck...
Uniquely built, and with a marvelous, rugged face, Roy Scheider, well known for his strong performances in "The French Connection," "Klute," and "Jaws," came on board as Hoffman's mysterious businessman brother, getting the rare chance to play a character that's both hero and villain... Doc is a fascinating guy because he chooses to work out his problems in a much different way than Dustin's character does... He was very touched and very moved by his father's death, but he abandoned all his hopes for whatever he intended to do and he became a spy, a killer, a very jaded personality...
In doing something truly suspenseful, Schlesinger accomplished a film that's largely about fear and it's about pain and the infliction of pain because of fear... The thrilling sensation of great expectations came on the 47th Street in the diamond district in New York, where Schlesinger gets the best of it...