Is it safe?
I streamed John Schlesinger‘s 1976 thriller Marathon Man on Netflix this weekend. I had forgotten how absolutely fantastic it is.
Following suit with great paranoia thrillers of the 1970s like Klute, Three Days of The Condor, All The President’s Men, Parallax View, and The Conversation, Marathon Man plays the dark and shadowy “who can you trust” chords with thrilling virtuosity.
The story follows Dustin Hoffman, an under-achieving Columbia University student by day, who likes to run around the Central Park Reservoir (it wasn’t the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir until 1994). Roy Scheider is his polished and exquisitely-tailored older brother, who lives an international life of well-compensated intrigue. When an attempt is made on Scheider’s life while on a job in Paris, he comes to New York to be with his runt of a younger brother, putting Hoffman’s life in danger. When Scheider shows up at Hoffman’s Upper West Side apartment door with fatal stab wounds to the stomach, the thrill level kicks into higher gear. The ones who were after Scheider are now after the unwitting Hoffman.
The villain is Laurence Oliver, an exiled Nazi torture dentist who comes out of hiding to New York City, where is safe-deposited fortune of stolen diamonds is now threatened. His methods of eliminating threats and getting answers is unorthodox to say the least.
The story is smart and terrifyingly believable, and the biggest thrills are from the simplest things. I never thought I could be so freaked out by a baby doll, by an assassin’s face behind a sheer curtain in broad daylight or by a bouncing soccer ball.
Brilliantly acted and tightly filmed, Marathon Man was directed by John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy) and written by William Goldman (screenplay and novel).
Here is the trailer:
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