Rating: 
Summary: Lacks bite
Review: "Szell! Szell!" I know it's hell, love, but there's still at least another twenty minutes of trite to go.
My favourite scene is wimpy student Hoffman taking out three agents so ruthless and specialised that they're a breed apart from the CIA and FBI. Such incompetence from a government agency has not been seen since 'Chain Reaction' in which Keaunu Reeves gets past an FBI agent by shoving him slightly, causing the man to yell "wEeEeuuRgH" and land on his back with legs and arms flailing like a spider.
The film tries to compensate for the lack of the book's running scene interior monologue by quick inserts of professional running footage, to little avail. The runner's battle with himself is muted to the point of irrelevence, here. Overall, Hoffman fails to nail his character and resorts to some histrionics here and there.
'Marathon Man' is distasteful and pointless, unless you want to take away the unnessential message that a Jew should avoid pointing a gun at his head when there's always somebody more deserving on the block. One of the least memorable thrillers of the seventies.
Rating: 
Summary: Hurry up and get this movie out on DVD!
Review: An underrated classic by William Goldman that rates with Hoffman's best movies.
Rating:
Summary: It's finally safe...
Review: Before he was that saintly nazi-hunter in THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL, Laurence Olivier was as bad and cold as nuclear winter in MARATHON MAN, from the wonderful mind of Willam Goldman. Along with THE FRENCH CONNECTION (also due soon on DVD) and THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123, this is one of the greatest "'70s New York" movies of all time, and it's finally here for you, as clear and sharp as one of Olivier's dental probes! Yes, Dustin Hoffman is great in this, but was anyone ever cooler than Roy Scheider as the brother who's "been away on business." Add Marthe Keller and that crackerjack Goldman dialogue and you've got a disc guaranteed to keep you far, far away from your next dental appointment. Is it safe? You better believe it!
Rating:
Summary: Olivier is scary
Review: Christian Szell - brilliantly played by Laurence Olivier - is one of the scariest movie characters of all time... right up there with Norman Bates and Hanibal Lechter. This movie always reminds me of one of Alfred Hitchcock's common themes: that evil comes in all shapes and sizes. Only Olivier could make us believe that a little old white-haired dentist is actually one of the most vile mass-murderes of the 20th century...
Rating: 
Summary: Great Mystery Thriller!
Review: Contrary to what some of the other reviewers have said, I consider this to be a very well produced look into the nature of the secret and often-murky world of espionage and big-stakes intrigue. Set in New York City at a thinly disguised Columbia University, the thriller stars Dustin Hoffman plays Tom Levy, a psychologically tortured graduate student in contemporary 20th century history who is the surviving younger son of an activist-scholar father, a man who had committed suicide after suffering vilification and career demise at the hands of the McCarthy hearings in the early 1950s. Roy Scheider plays Tom's older brother Henry, who has chosen a different means to face the world of power and privilege as a corrupted agent who is scheming with his best friend and handler (William Devane) to surreptitiously blackmail a reclusive Nazi war criminal, the infamous White Angel of the death camps, Christian Szell, wonderfully played with panache and chilling deadliness by the consummate Sir Lawrence Olivier.Due to an unfortunate accident involving his equally anti-Semitic brother, who acted as Szell's agent in laundering the ill-gotten mother lode of diamonds Szell had personally stolen during the war from victims of the Holocaust, the evil dentist is forced to leave his hideout in the South American jungle to retrieve all the remaining diamonds to ensure his financial future. And the game of high stakes cat and mouse is on, a game involving several sub-plots, and involves an unlikely collage of good and bad guys in one of the most mind-twisting and yet entertaining spy flicks this side of "The Three Days Of The Condor". This film borders on being film noire, and offers very graphic and violent sequences that are not fro children or the squeamish. The cast is excellent, and takes us through the fast paced and often unpredictable murder and mayhem that courses like a river out of control through the length of the movie. The psychological dimensions of the film are interesting, as are the accurate looks at what complications and perversions the human heart seems capable of us. If any movie will make you wonder about things that go bump in the night, it is a movie like this wonderful thriller from Director John Schlesinger of people caught in the midst of a maelstrom they don't really understand or know how to deal with. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Suspense!
Review: Dustin Hoffman has the incredible ability to make suspense come alive, like no other actor. This is one of his best roles. Bravo!!
Rating:
Summary: Suspense!
Review: Dustin Hoffman has the incredible ability to make suspense come alive, like no other actor. This is one of his best roles. Bravo!!
Rating:
Summary: A Great American Thriller
Review: Dustin Hoffman is Thomas Levy, history graduate student at Columbia and obsessive runner. He's obsessed too with the death of his father, another historian, who was driven to suicide by the McCarthy witch-hunts, a preoccupation distrusted both by his pompous and disagreeable professor (Fritz Weaver) and by his brother Henry (Roy Scheider). Henry is believed by Thomas to be a bigshot executive for an oil company but in fact he is an undercover agent working for some obscure special operations outfit. In this capacity he is embroiled with the plans of evil former Nazi torturer Dr. Christian Szell (Olivier) to come to America to pick up a collection of diamonds extorted from Jews during the war, now in a New York bank. Things seem to be turning nasty. People are trying to kill Henry. And indeed the bad guys seem to be taking a bit of an interest in Thomas too as well as in his new Swiss (or is she?) girlfriend Elsa (Marthe Keller). This great thriller is one of the highpoints of 1970 American cinema. Everyone involved is at the height of their powers. For both Hoffman and writer William Goldman it was project that followed "All the President's Men". For Scheider it followed fairly hot on the heels of "Jaws". And it's one of the high points in the career of distinguished British director John Schlesinger who died just a few months back. Schlesinger's direction is brilliant. The set pieces are extraordinarily well put together starting right at the front in a brilliant scene where an initially innocuous road rage incident turns into a catastrophic road accident. And the atmosphere of New York's streets is superbly captured throughout, in the scenes that track Hoffman's running forays, in the famous scene where former inmates of Auschwitz recognize Szell in the street; and throughout; indeed it counts as one of the great New York movies. The acting is splendid too. Hoffman and Scheider on excellent form. Keller and the plot line involving her work less well and that is perhaps the movie's weakest aspect. But it's more than compensated by Olivier whose Dr Szell, a.k.a. "Der Weisse Engel", is one of the greatest and most frightening of screen baddies and makes Hannibal Lecter look like a pussycat. (A story I remember hearing about the movie that may very well be apocryphal but is still fun. Apparently when Hoffman was required to enter a room after supposedly having been out running, he would go running for real first to create the requisite exhausted, out of breath effect. Olivier, on having this explained to him, is said to have inquired: "Why not try ACTING, dear boy?"). And of course he gets centre-stage in one of the scariest scenes ever. "Jaws" played on our fears of large unseen marine predators; "Nightmare on Elm Street" on our fear of nightmares; "Arachnophobia" on our fear of spiders. But Goldman and Schlesinger are cleverer than any of these and tap into our deepest and most primal fear of all, fear of visiting the dentist, with unforgettable effect.
Rating:
Summary: Running For His Life
Review: Dustin Hoffman stars as a serious student, plagued by his father's suicide brought on by the communist witch hunts, whose brother is mixed up with corrupt goverment officials and Nazis. When his brother is murdered, they come after him, assuming his brother has shared some key information with him. The movie starts off with a bang, and the rest of the film is punctuated with several scenes filled with action and tension. Those scenes are well done (including a famous torture scene you won't forget). However, the scenes linking the action stretches are less successful, presenting ill-defined characters and moments where it appears something was left on the cutting room floor. The actors are all good, with Hoffman intense as usual, and Roy Scheider as the brother and Laurence Olivier as the Nazi dentist excellent in support. The movie certainly kept my interest, despite the awkward "between" moments, and director John Schlesinger knows how to keep the intensity and tension high when it counts. The Marathon Man is certainly worth a look.
Rating: 
Summary: so what
Review: every body says this movie is "great",its dumb,it goes from scene to scene,and that about it,as for the torture scenes,they are like barely a minute long altogther(there are two torture scenes)they dont show anything,i was bored at the end of the movie.
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