Marathon Man (1976)

Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, and Roy Scheider
Grade: A

Even the Nazi tells the ultra-smug Janey that he’s a detestable person. That should tell you how much of a motherfucker that character is. The way William Devane carries himself in Marathon Man is guaranteed to piss you off.

Summary

In New York City, marathon runner Thomas Babington “Babe” Levy (Hoffman) goes on a run in Central Park. At the same time, Klaus Szell (Ben Dova) gets his safe deposit box, takes out the small metal tin from inside it, pockets the tin, and has the bank worker put the box back. Klaus gets his keys back and leaves.

On the street, an unknown man walks near Klaus, and Klaus discreetly gives the man the tin before getting in his car. During Klaus’s drive, his car breaks down and he’s stuck in the middle street. Soon after, a Jewish man has car troubles of his own and exits the mechanic’s place because he didn’t have an appointment and wanted it fixed on the spot but was turned down. The Jewish man ends up driving to the street that Klaus is stuck in the middle of, and he immediately starts yelling out of his car at him. Klaus notices he’s Jewish, so he escalates the situation with his German insults, prompting the Jewish man to call him a Nazi. The Jewish man starts driving his car into Klaus’s until Klaus is able to get his car to go. Still angry, the Jewish man follows Klaus down the road and continues to hit his car with his own. They end up side by side at some point and bump each other until they crash into a Fuel Oil Service truck. Both cars end up in flames. The Jewish man dies in the collision, and Klaus only survives long enough to drop his keys. Thomas can hear the sirens from Central Park and runs in place to see it before getting back to his workout. Some runner makes a snide comment when he looks at his stopwatch (“Behind schedule?”), so it motivates Thomas to run faster to try and beat the guy. Unfortunately, he isn’t able to catch up. Sometime later, he runs back to his apartment. A group of neighbors who regularly make fun of Thomas and refer to him as “Creepy” jokingly ask if he’s going to time himself in the shower, but he doesn’t respond. By the time Thomas gets in his apartment, he looks at his written records and compares his time to a previous one and sees that the other one was faster. He turns on the television to have the news playing in the background when he sits in his bath. Naturally, the news report is all about the car accident between Klaus and the Jewish man.

Strangely enough, Klaus is outed in the news report as being the 72-year-old brother of infamous Nazi Christian Szell (Olivier), who was thought to have perished after he attempted to flee Berlin at the end of World War II.

In Paris, France, Thomas’s brother Agent Henry “Doc” Levy (Scheider) is being driven to his hotel. After bypassing some protesters who are fighting against pollution, he is in his hotel room and takes the metal tin from earlier and puts it in and under a box of chocolates. Commander Peter “Janey” Janeway (William Devane) calls him to ask about London, and he downplays it and invites Janey to his room. A hotel worker enters the room during his call to bring him a suit, and the worker opens his closet door, but Doc sends him away because it isn’t his. Doc takes a taxi to speak with LeClerc (Jacques Marin), a store owner selling expensive trinkets and ornaments and such. When he walks to the shop, there are eyes on him like weird looking henchman Chen (James Wing Woo), and an unknown person who follows behind Doc while guiding a baby stroller. As Doc enters LeClerc’s shop, an American woman tries to get LeClerc to sell something for half price, but he acts like he doesn’t speak English. The woman and her husband leave, allowing Doc to approach him to give him the box of chocolates. As LeClerc opens the box, Doc notes how surprised LeClerc looked to see him, so he wonders if he thought he was supposed to be dead. LeClerc denies it, saying he was just expecting him three days ago. Doc just passes it off as him being busy and how he has a lot more to do in the city with this visit being one of them. After turning down LeClerc offering him a chocolate, LeClerc reveals he doesn’t have anything for him here because he couldn’t keep “it” in the shop. He’ll have it for Doc tonight, but he has to come with him to the opera to get it, a very long French opera. Doc is annoyed but agrees and tells him to leave the ticket at the box office, as he will be there before its over. The person with the baby stroller leaves it in between two stores on a sidewalk. Inside the stroller is a doll of a baby, and it’s ticking. Slowly, the eyes of the doll mechanically open and the ticking stops just as Doc gets in his taxi to leave.

The doll explodes and it destroys some nearby shop. Doc isn’t harmed, but he was very close to the explosion and just narrowly avoided it.

Being a graduate student at Columbia, Thomas gets directions for Professor Biesenthal’s (Fritz Weaver) class, as he was selected for his seminar. Upon his late entrance into the classroom, Biesenthal asks Thomas what the subject of his dissertation is. It’s the use of tyranny in American political life. When questioned further for examples, Thomas brings up Coolidge breaking up the Boston police strike, and Roosevelt putting Japanese Americans in concentration camps. Biesenthal suggests he talk about Senator John McCarthy, and Thomas lets him know he is planning to do a chapter on him. Biesenthal moves on and points out how the four students in the class were chosen out of 200 applicants and how he’s trying to help create historians. Switching gears, he quotes Alfred, Lord Tennyson with, “Let us hush this cry of progress til 10,000 years have passed”. He asks the class of four who said this, and no one knows. Thomas secretly does and writes Tennyson on his notebook but doesn’t speak up. Biesenthal is agitated they don’t know who said it after revealing who it was, tells them he hopes they all flunk, and dismisses the rest of class. He stops Thomas from leaving however to talk with him privately, bringing up how he knew Thomas’s father. He was Biesenthal’s mentor, something Thomas already knew. Biesenthal wonders about Thomas’s older brother, and Thomas calls him a rich and successful businessman, joking that his father would have disowned him. Biesenthal asks why he’s at Columbia for his doctorate, but Thomas just chalks it up to things happening as they do. Biesenthal is aware that Thomas’s father got his doctorate at Columbia as well and tells him he cannot fill his father’s shoes, and he has to go on his own path. Biesenthal also questions why he didn’t answer the Tennyson question because he could tell from Thomas’s expression that he knew the answer. Thomas doesn’t know, prompting Biesenthal to say he can’t fathom Thomas’s mind if he continues to hide it from him. Next, he asks if McCarthy is central to his dissertation. When Thomas tries to explain things, Biesenthal asks again more sternly, subtly implying that it should be, so Thomas agrees.

Biesenthal brings up how Thomas wishes to write about a period in America’s history that destroyed his father, but he stresses that it cannot be a hysterical crusade. It must be an objective doctoral thesis. Thomas gets a quick flashback to when he was a child swinging on a swing before Biesenthal dismisses him. Before Thomas opens the door to leave, he tells Biesenthal that he doesn’t have to worry about clearing his father because he was innocent. His mind traces back to another quick flashback where he remembers being on that swing, hearing a gunshot in the house, and sprinting to the house to see what happened. Going back to the classroom, Thomas asks Biesenthal if he too agreed that his father was innocent, but Biesenthal says he was guilty, “guilty of being arrogant and brilliant, and of being naive. He was guilty of not being able to cope with the humiliation of being dismissed, but of the charges, I know he was innocent”. During Biesenthal’s response, we cut to the flashback of a young Thomas peering through the window to see his father dead on the ground with a gun in his hand, as he shot himself. Going back to the classroom, Biesenthal admits to Thomas that he wept the day Thomas’s father died. Thomas says it was a bad day for all of them before leaving. Back in Paris, Janey is having lunch with Nicole (Nicole Deslauriers), and Doc shows up just as she’s leaving. Doc agrees to meet up with her later before sitting down with Janey to say something else is going on that they don’t know about. He talks about almost dying from the explosion and how LeClerc was not expecting him, but Janey doesn’t believe him, bringing up how there’s been three bombs a day going off since the strikes have been happening. Janey thinks he’s crazy but agrees to check it out. Doc goes to the opera that night mid-show after grabbing his ticket, and he sits in the wrong spot at first. Realizing it’s the area next to that door, he goes inside to find LeClerc. Unfortunately, he’s dead and his throat is slashed. Immediately, Doc gets out of there. For the record, Chen has eyes on him throughout this, and he was seen previously during Doc’s lunch with Janey and on the street corner before Doc met LeClerc the first time.

Outside somewhere, Nicole goes to approach Doc, but he tells her to keep moving as LeClerc is dead and it’s not safe. She walks into the shadows, and all Doc hears is a thud. Then, a soccer ball is launched in Doc’s direction, and he watches as it passes. He gets the hell out of there.

The next morning, Doc gets some pushups in and walks onto the balcony to see a parade going on. Many others are on their balconies watching as well. Just then, Chen appears behind him and tries to choke him with a wire. Doc is able to put his hand in the way last second to block it from his throat. Though it cuts his hand pretty bad, he is able to fight Chen in his hotel room, eventually breaking his neck to kill him. Immediately after, Doc calls it in to have the body removed and for him to be taken to a clinic for his hand. At the clinic, Janey goes to see him once his hand is wrapped up and he talks with him privately. The injury is pretty bad, and it will take a while for it to heal, but both men are positive about it. Janey changes the subject to say that Christian Szell’s brother Klaus was killed in Manhattan in an accident with an oil truck. Apparently, this changes everything, with Doc realizing, “They’re getting all the couriers”. Meanwhile, Thomas studies at the library and a Swiss woman also studying there catches his eye. Her name is Elsa Opel (Marthe Keller). She notices him looking and asks if Boss Tweed’s real first name was “Boss”, so Thomas tells her it was a nickname and his actual name was William Marcy Tweed, though he’s wrong too as his actual middle name was “Magear”, but I digress. Anyway, Thomas writes it down for her and talks about how they called him “Boss” because he was a corrupt politician, and he had a bunch of political hacks around him called the Tweed Ring. She knew this part and gets short with him, asking for her pencil. After he explains that it’s his pencil, she gets embarrassed and goes back to reading and he sits back down. He continues to stare at her though, so she gets up and leaves. When she does, Thomas grabs one of the books she left on the table and chases after her to give it to her. She thanks him and keeps going, but he continues to pursue and lets her know that her name and address were on the inside of the book, which is why he was able to find out where she lived.

She doesn’t really care and says goodbye. Ever the persistent one, Thomas still follows her inside to her apartment complex. He says he twisted his ankle on the way over there, so he’s using this as an excuse to give it a rest. She notices he’s not limping, so explains he’s a marathon runner. When you race 26 miles, you don’t give in to pain. Technically, he hasn’t run a whole marathon yet, but he hopes to. She wishes him good luck and continues down the hall, so he admits that he stole her book. He put it underneath his book to create this interaction to talk to her. She blushes to Thomas calling her pretty but is still reluctant to his advances. Eventually, she does give in to agree to seeing him again, though she’s confident it won’t lead to anything. Even so, Thomas is ecstatic once she closes the door. In Uruguay, Christian Szell prepares to travel. He is aware of his brother’s death in New York, as the newspapers are all over the room where he’s staying at. Next, he shaves the top of his hair off to give himself a new balding haircut, with just the hair on the sides showing. He disguises himself like a nun and is escorted by boat to get past nearby soldiers who are stationed close to the river. Back in New York, Thomas goes on a date with Elsa to the zoo and wins her over fairly quickly. Over time, they get closer. Eventually, she is timing his runs around Central Park for him, and they have sex. At one point though, they are both attacked in Central Park by two random men and are robbed. Thomas writes to Doc about Elsa and how she’s a history student he’s seeing, and how they were mugged. He writes about how Doc used to say he doesn’t confront things, but with this incident, he feels like that he would kill these two guys if he ever found them. He never knew that he could feel like that inside and finishes his letter off with this update. On the plane, Szell is in the bathroom shaving the top of his head again to maintain the haircut and he puts this thick metallic bracelet on. On the loudspeaker, it is said that the strike of the baggage handlers at Kennedy Airport has not been resolved. This results in everyone looking for their bag outside after the flight, including Szell.

The two men who beat down Thomas and Elsa join Szell at the airport and walk with him. The one laughs when Szell says with a serious face, “They were always so confident God was on their side. Now I think they are not so sure”.

Thomas is sleeping in his apartment around midnight, and someone enters discreetly, grabbing the notebook off of Thomas’s bed and dropping it on the ground to wake him up. It’s Doc, and he’s just messing with Thomas. Even so, he lets Thomas freak out a bit, with Thomas saying he has a gun while waving his flashlight across the room in a panic. Finally, Doc reveals himself by putting a pillow over Thomas’s face as a joke. They play fight for a bit, Doc passes off his hand injury as a bottle slicing him, and they open a bottle of wine while Doc talks about how it is in Washington and how he can have Thomas stay at his place there, so he can go to Georgetown instead. Thomas declines and asks how work has been, not knowing what Doc actually does. Doc says the oil business is good, and Thomas says they are polluters and thieves. Doc doesn’t take it personally, and he shouldn’t since this isn’t actually his job, and they toast. They discuss the men that attacked Thomas in the park when Doc asks about it, and Thomas says they were dressed like Doc. He then notices some papers and wonders if it’s for Thomas’s dissertation, but Thomas reveals that they are interviews about their father. He invites Doc to read it, but Doc isn’t interested, calling their father a drunk who killed himself. Thomas reminds him that he didn’t start to drink until after the hearings. When he points out the people who talk about it, Doc asks where those people were when their father needed them, so Thomas defends them because they were afraid just like anyone else. Even so, Doc thinks Thomas is throwing his life away because what he’s doing isn’t going to change anything, telling him to forget it because it’s over. Thomas gets quiet and states it might be over for Doc, but it’s not for him. Sitting on his bed, Thomas thinks Doc wants him to be more like him, but this isn’t the case either. Doc is supposed to be the best at his business, but he’s only the best because people think he’s the best. Unfortunately, he’s past it and he knows it. Sooner or later, it’s going to become common knowledge. With this, Thomas sees that something has gotten to Doc.

Doc changes the subject by wondering if Thomas still has the gun their father used on himself, and he does. Thomas pulls it out of his desk, and it’s wrapped in a towel. He doesn’t know why he keeps it. Doc points out the irony of Thomas having this sense of vengeance despite being a “liberal pacifist”. Regardless, he offers to take Thomas and Elsa out for lunch tomorrow and he accepts. The two have a personal moment where they acknowledge how happy they are to see each other and go to bed. The next day, they go to a fancy restaurant with Elsa, and the waiter gives Thomas a bowtie to wear because it’s a rule of the place. Doc orders the Chablis and compares the look of it to diamonds, putting his hand on Elsa’s. Once they get their food, Doc questions Elsa further about her village in Switzerland. She says she’s from a small place called Ferbiere. Doc can’t believe the coincidence, saying that his co-worker is big into skiing and has talked about the village and how it’s at the foot of Mount Rosa. Apparently, it’s some of the best skiing you can do in the world, with Elsa wholeheartedly agreeing. Doc assumes she knows the famous instructor there named Claude LaSoeur, and she does. Just then, Doc outs her for being a liar. He made all of this up. There is no Mount Rosa in Ferbiere nor a Claude LaSoeur. He knows she’s not Swiss, so he demands to know where she’s from, guessing Germany. On top of that, he asks how long her working papers are good for. Thomas is confused and thinks this is a joke while Elsa says she doesn’t need papers because she’s a student there. Doc accuses her of trying to marry Thomas to get her papers and then leaving him, and she gets extremely defensive while Thomas tells him to stop. She storms off, and Doc tells Thomas to let her go because she’s a phony and she’s after something, but Thomas tells him to stay out it before chasing after Elsa. That night, Szell waits with a bodyguard for “Schylla”, Doc’s codename. Doc shows up late, and Szell is already mad, but Doc tells him he has no right to be because he knows all the shit Szell has been up to like sending Chen after him. Of course, Szell denies this.

Doc doesn’t mind Chen’s attack, but he can’t believe that Szell had the audacity to involve Thomas in what’s going on because they are never supposed to involve family. Szell tells him that it’s a warning and nothing more, prompting Doc to send him to the ground by slapping the fuck out of him and calling that a warning. Szell refuses to fight him because he’s too old and smart for that, but he does go back to the conversation. He asks Doc if he is to be trusted, and he says, “No” to piss him off. Doc knows Szell is going to the bank sooner than later. Szell suggests he may have already gone, but Doc knows he didn’t because he wouldn’t be talking to him otherwise. Doc also knows that Szell is panicking and that he thinks when he leaves the bank, someone is going to rob him. Szell asks Doc again if he can trust him, but Doc knows he never could. He only had to. Szell gets mad because they are talking about his safety. Doc gets candid and starts to talk about how he doesn’t give a fuck about Szell’s safety until Szell stabs him directly in the stomach and leaves with his henchman. Thomas gets back to his apartment from running, and he gets a phone call from Elsa. He was trying to call her for two hours, but she didn’t pick up, so he just went out for a run. He tells her to forget about the lunch, and he will come see her after a shower. After he hangs up, he goes to get ready but turns to find Doc standing there bleeding out. He falls into a frantic Thomas’s arms, and Thomas lays him on the ground and tries to talk to him until Doc dies. Soon after, Thomas calls the authorities.

Unbeknownst to him, Thomas is now stuck in the middle of all this and will be targeted because the bad guys assume Doc let him in on what’s going on. As a result, they see Thomas as a problem that can halt their plans. However, when he states he doesn’t know anything, he’s 100% serious (“I was here. Doc died. You came.”). Just like Janey later says about Thomas once he’s captured, he doesn’t think Thomas knows anything, but he also knows too much.

My Thoughts:

In a whirlwind thriller involving Nazis, diamonds, Uruguay, and Dustin Hoffman, John Schlesinger’s Marathon Man has a little bit of everything.

As with most thrillers, the name of the game is survival. Marathon Man does it from every angle though, and it all ties back to the main plot in a lot of intriguing and memorable ways. First, there’s Thomas. He’s a marathon runner and is working on his doctorate. From tirelessly trying to clear the name of his wronged father to persistently pursuing a woman that seemingly wants nothing to do with him, he is driven in all aspects of his life and cannot be strayed away from his path. The protagonist is a captivating one because he’s so far removed from what going’s on that he should be the last person caught in a plot involving Nazis and stolen diamonds, but at the same time, he’s also the best person to place directly in the middle of it all because his lack of knowledge or resources to fight what is going on around him makes him the embodiment of the survival theme. He shouldn’t even be there and doesn’t have a dog in the fight whatsoever to pull him in. It’s just bad luck and his brother’s job existing. That’s all it took. Now, he has to fight for his life, dealing with secret agents, criminals, and men who have no problem killing at the drop of a hat. Though there are nuances to his good-natured brother Doc’s involvement with Szell and Janey, there are none involving Thomas. The only relation he has to what’s going on is that he’s related to his brother. That’s it, but this association makes him THE target for everyone, and he’s chased, tortured, beaten up, and everything in between. Just like any regular person when their back is against the wall however, Thomas does everything he can to find a way to survive. At some point, he’s awake for days, running like a madman. He doesn’t have a car, let alone a shirt or shoes. Even so, when the smallest sliver of opportunity presents itself, he takes it and makes a run for it. Because of the shape he’s in, he’s able to elude the men after him, though credit to William Devane’s Janey because he was keeping up there for a while.

Now, as gruesome as it may sound, I was really enjoyed watching what Thomas endured, but it’s because of the aftermath above all else. Despite getting the hell beat out of him and getting an unwanted dental surgery without an anesthesia, Thomas still managed to find ways to overcome such adversity with just thinking in the moment, adrenaline running to the max, using every ounce of energy contained in his body when a sense of danger is present, and utilizing his brain and instincts to react as quickly and as intelligently as possible. More importantly, he’s not breaking down doors and kicking the ass of a legion of villains, and he’s not doing anything implausible. Everything he does works within the confines of the character and he pulls off reasonable and believable stunts in his reactions and thought process. At most, you could argue Thomas’s jump from the freeway to land on the entrance ramp barefooted could have snapped an ankle, but that’s as far as it goes. Even then, you still could argue that the shape he’s in plus the adrenaline might be able to allow him to escape without breaking something. Additionally, there’s the realism in the surroundings. As much as we want random citizens in New York to help Thomas because we are invested in the movie and the character, you can’t help but agree with the logistical reactions from everyone around him. Imagine seeing a shirtless and disheveled Thomas screaming and raving like a lunatic on the street looking for help. Would you stop your car to pick him up? Probably not, right? Considering he’s also in New York of all places, there’s little to no chance anyone stops for him, which is why the only time he finally gets anywhere is when he waves down a taxi. Even then, he begs for a dime from the driver so he can make a phone call, and the guy refuses, so he gives up his Rolex. Instead of just parting with the dime since he sees that Thomas is clearly in some sort of trouble, the driver accepts it and drives off. Let’s be real, a New York taxi driver being this much of a prick is not out of the realm of possibility. Again, as much as we want human decency to prevail within the context of the movie’s event, we can’t help but agree with the realism portrayed in Marathon Man and why Thomas receives no help when faced with a true danger.

Besides this, it’s just his creative survival tactics living in the asphalt jungle. For instance, I adored his solution of getting his criminal neighbors to rob his own apartment to grab some stuff for him and allowing them to take whatever they want in exchange because he’s that desperate. THIS is survival mode. Thomas knows his apartment is being watched, and he knows Janey will be waiting, but the group of criminals carrying guns and stopping Janey as he tries to tell them to back off was brilliant. In fact, the whole sequence was brilliant, like when Thomas quickly covers the speaker when Melendez’s mother answers his buzzing to their apartment because he knows she’s going to scream through it since it’s so late in the night. Watching Hoffman squirm and panic while trying to avoid being seen by the henchmen in the parked car across the street was expert levels of acting. Though Hoffman makes the viewer sweat consistently throughout this pulse-pounding thriller, this scene alone will have you physically ducking just like him, as he tries to avoid yelling but urgently and frantically asks Melendez’s mother, “Donde esta su hijo? Es muy importante! Por favor, Es muy importante!”. Again, it’s all about survival, and Thomas begging for a group of people that refer to him as “Creepy” to rob his apartment to get him his gun and some clothes and praying to God they come through is about as do-or-die as it gets. He didn’t shortchange them either. He lets Melendez know that “The catch is, it’s dangerous”, but Melendez thankfully sees it as fun. It gives us a momentary release from the suspense, and it’s masterfully executed in just the right point of the action to give us a nice break, along with Thomas himself. Thomas and his ability to find a way to survive when he should be dead long before this is a great example as to how far the human body can push themselves when faced with danger, fatigue, or the forces of evil. Next, there’s the alexia-suffering Christian Szell, the other side of the coin when it comes to survival.

Known as the “Weisse Engel” (White Angel) because of his striking head of white hair, he survived World War II after running an experimental camp at Auschwitz, committing countless atrocities while there, along with promising Jews an escape route but taken the gold out of their teeth as payment before burning them. He became the wealthiest and most wanted Nazi alive, fleeing to Uruguay to survive when the world wanted him dead. To ensure his life, he worked with the agency Doc was in. Whenever The Division wanted to bring in a Nazi, Szell would rat them out, as he kept track of all their whereabouts. He double crossed everyone to make sure he survived, and he had his fortune. Following his brother’s death and knowing he had to get to his precious diamonds to again secure his survival, he figured out another plan, changing his appearance and disguising himself as a nun to get safe passage to an airplane and getting to New York unscathed. Szell is that of a cockroach that just won’t die and will use any tactic he has to get to his ultimate goal of those diamonds, an ensured happy retirement for the Nazi bastard. Making him a dentist on top of being a Nazi just make things even worse. Laurence Olivier is phenomenal in the role too. His haunting delivery of “Is it safe?” over and over with no context to the confused Thomas gives you chills. Plus, it makes it funnier when Thomas can sense the heightened tension in the room so he’s just like, “Yes, it’s safe. It’s very safe. It’s so safe you wouldn’t believe it.” before being asked again so he tries to respond in kind, “No, it’s not safe. It’s very dangerous. Be careful”. With the way the scene is blocked and how it’s framed onscreen to the appearance of the subdued but dastardly Szell asking the same question, there is no doubt that all the focus from the viewer is fixated on what’s being presented at that very moment. The terror was already present in the electric home invasion sequence where Thomas is snatched from his apartment, but it really sets in here because you’re really not sure how far this interrogation is going to go. You have an idea, but nothing is confirmed. Then, the one henchman grabs Thomas and forcefully opens his mouth.

Right there, the game of torture scenes in film changes because you know things are going to get uncomfortable and in a hurry with just this move. When Szell pulls the first tooth and Thomas screams in pain, even the other henchman winces! Do you realize how rare that is? That is how you sell the audience on how evil Christian Szell is. Murder is one thing to explain to the audience who the bad guy is, but doing forced dental work to the point where the henchman looks away is entirely different (“Relief or discomfort – The decision is in your hands”). It’s brutal and only makes us question how in the world will someone like Thomas, a person with no fighting or espionage experience at all, escape the clutches of such a force. It’s a great build, and the swerve with Janey that turns the audience on its head to make them just as paranoid as the main character was a great way to change things up and to avoid going down the pedestrian path one would expect from the usual thriller. After putting these two sequences back-to-back, the movie is letting the audience know they are in for a much different ride than what they were initially expecting. Besides the torture scenes though, it shouldn’t be a question that the second best scene was Szell walking down the street in New York and being spotted by an old Jewish woman (“I know that man!”). Can you imagine being a Holocaust survivor who has tried to put the horrors of what you previously experienced behind you, and then you find yourself in the same vicinity of a high-ranking person at Auschwitz responsible for the death of countless people all those years later? Bone-chilling stuff. On that note, the first appearance of the diamonds from the tins was a magnificent reveal.

Doc’s role in all of this is unclear, as is The Division and what they even do (“There is a gap between what the FBI can handle effectively and what the CIA doesn’t want to deal with. That’s where we come in”). Janey explains how they “provide…anything” and that all their deals cut both ways, which is why they interact with Szell, but the intentions of Doc specifically and pretty much everything involving the couriers isn’t really explained in as much detail as they should be. The viewer is made to feel just as left in the dark as Thomas is, but there is no eventual explanation that makes us okay with being confused at the details for a majority of the runtime. Also, why is Szell so confident that Doc’s whole motivation was to rob him? Is it just because Doc is mean to him? Sure, the diamonds are worth a lot of money, but there is nothing that happens in the first act that would tease us enough for us to think Doc would do such a thing and risk so much. If Szell maybe alluded to more illegal activity from Doc or how he’s double crossed him or something, then I could see it, but there’s just not enough for the viewer to fully grasp what the goal is for Doc as a character or think he’s capable of such an antagonistic action. If his whole role’s purpose is to be a red herring, I guess it works, but somehow, I doubt that was the point. If Szell was so confident Doc would rob him, then they should have left in the eight-and-a-half-minute fight sequence that Doc was involved in that was cut from the final product. The point of it was to show more of Doc’s flaws and vicious side, but it was cut because of the violence apparently. Unfortunately, without it, it changes our entire perception of the character and the motivation of all the characters. Without it, Doc just looks like a regular, good-natured American spy doing his job. I haven’t viewed the cut sequence, but if that was the intention of it, then it was desperately needed because otherwise all the characters’ suspicions about Doc don’t seem nearly as warranted as they make it out to be.

Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed Marathon Man. With that being said, it reaches its peak in the torture scene, which is around halfway through the movie. I’ll argue that it wasn’t long enough either. It was longer originally, but test screenings force them to cut bits from it because people couldn’t handle it, which is an absolute travesty really. This section of the movie has already been heralded as a masterful sequence, one that everyone remembers and is arguably the only scene you may recall from the movie years down the line. It should’ve been milked for all that it was worth, leaning into it like in French Connection II when Charnier has his henchmen get Popeye Doyle addicted to heroin. When the camera looked away after the final forced dental surgery, so Szell could drill into the healthy tooth until he got to the pulp, I was a little agitated. As much as I was cringing during it, I wanted to see how far they would go to tear apart Thomas, as it would makes us cheer for him even more when he is able to escape. Regardless, it’s still an awesome series of scenes that will forever be everyone’s takeaway from Marathon Man, along with Laurence Oliver’s all-time villain. Nevertheless, that is part of the problem with the feature as a whole. The excitement surrounding the conspiracy, the action involving it before and after, and the eventual third act that attempts to connect the dots never reach the standard set by this movie-defining sequence in the middle. Where the story arc goes to after this isn’t disappointing per say, it is a tinge underwhelming, especially since we are led to believe that what Thomas is engulfed in is so Earth-shattering. (SPOILERS, SPOILERS, SPOILERS) Unfortunately, combined with Szell’s reveal to him that this only happened because he was scared of being robbed when he left the bank (with Thomas literally asking, “So all this happened because you were afraid you were gonna be robbed?” – “Yes”; “But you weren’t sure?” – “No”) to the less satisfying showdown between Thomas and Szell, I couldn’t help but feel like something more violent was needed, especially after Szell goads Thomas by calling him weak and insulting his father and brother on top of that.

*SPOILERS CONTINUED*

The book the film is based on does have a darker and more violent ending, with Thomas gunning down Szell in Central Park after a speech and subsequently getting arrested. It has been said that Robert Towne was brought in to rewrite William Goldman’s ending, and it has been speculated that on top of that, Dustin Hoffman pushed for it to be changed to what we got in the movie. My guess for the reasoning is that maybe Hoffman wanted the Thomas character to be able to walk away from it without suffering even more devastation since he’s already been through so much. Plus, I’ll admit that the book’s ending isn’t as momentous or cinematic as the larger scale one depicted in the film. Even so, the brutality of the book ending fits the events of the story a lot better. There needed to be a compromise of both endings here. Thomas forcing Szell to swallow the diamonds was genius, but the fight between them made Thomas look bad. Considering the shape he’s in, and the vengeful side brought out in him from this situation while standing across from a literal Nazi, I’d like to think that he would look a lot better in a one-on-one situation with this old man. Szell’s unlucky fall where he somehow stabs himself was a cop out to save the Thomas character from offscreen imprisonment, and it just flat-out wasn’t good enough to be the payoff to the hell Thomas endured. The climax still should have happened in the pump room, with Thomas forcing Szell to swallow some of the diamonds. However, in the middle of it, Szell could use this as a distraction to sucker punch Thomas, and they get into a scrap on that platform. However, the struggle should end with Thomas getting out of it and overcoming adversity one more time to mount him and just hammerfist the fuck out of him until he stays there and shuts up. Then, he can spew whatever dialogue, and Szell can respond by calling him weak and insulting his father and brother like he did in the film, prompting Thomas to shoot him. Following this, he can throw the diamonds into the water, exit the pump room, and he can chuck the gun into the Reservoir.

I just think this would be a much better compromise than the safe ending we got. Those torture scenes changed the movie. It brought out the desire for a bloody revenge. Not giving it to the viewer makes them feel unsatiated. The ending was still solid and everything, but it just wasn’t an equal payoff to what Thomas was put through. On a side note, I still liked the sequence involving the desperate Thomas demanding answers out of Elsa at Klaus’s house to set up the shootout. Thomas is at his most paranoid and for good reason. He assumed the worst and it was confirmed but watching him handle it like a man was powerful. In that moment, you can feel every emotion Thomas is going through. It starts with the moment of realization of them getting to this “lucky” location, and then his suspicions setting in and hoping for it to not be true but his gut feeling telling him otherwise. As he nears a breakdown and his fucked-up teeth are shown while he demands Elsa’s explanation, you can’t help but sympathize with this poor bastard after everything he’s been through. No one has gone through such pain both inside and out that Thomas has dealt with over the course of this film. When he holds back tears to Elsa’s honest statements with, “God, you’re pretty”, the viewer finds themselves praying for Thomas to catch one break. Even so, the killers are coming for him to finish the job, and he doesn’t know what to do. He’s just going off his instincts. He doesn’t want to kill, but he knows if he doesn’t react, he will be taken advantage of yet again. It’s the pickle of all pickles.

Marathon Man is an invigorating thriller, fueled by a fantastic Dustin Hoffman and a sinister Laurence Olivier. It may not reach the high bar it sets for itself midway through the film, but it’s an exhilarating production and great escapist entertainment with high production values, great camera work, a chilling score, great cinematography, and a real sense of danger.