MARATHON MAN

 Brutal and sensationalist it may be but John Schlesinger's "Marathon Man" is also one of the best thrillers ever to have come out of America and a great deal of the fun is just trying to put the pieces of this brilliant jigsaw puzzle of a picture together. William Goldman adapted his own novel for the screen and Schlesinger seemed to be the perfect man for the job. He certainly doesn't put a foot wrong here and it's got a terrific cast. The undeniably complex plot has Hoffman becoming the unwitting target of both 'The Division', (some kind of off-shoot of the CIA and the FBI), and some old Nazis simply because his brother, Roy Schneider, was an agent involved with WW2 Nazi Laurence Olivier, now forced from his hiding place in South America and on the trail of his diamonds in New York.

Hoffman, at 39 clearly too old for the role he's playing but brilliant nevertheless, is a student in New York where Olivier seeks him out believing he knows whether or not his brother Schneider planned to steal Olivier's diamonds from him. Several sequences are classics; the opening car chase between two old men through New York streets, Olivier's torture of Hoffman, ('Is it safe?'), the attempts to kill Schneider in Paris and best of all the scene where Oliver is recognized by a couple of Holocaust survivors in New York's diamond quarter.

Goldman doesn't make things easy for us. You will probably have to pay close attention to get the relationship between Schneider and colleague William Devane or just to figure out how they became involved with Olivier in the first place, (in one scene Devane attempts to put the whole thing into some kind of context at breakneck speed). The whole cast, (including Marthe Keller as a woman Hoffman takes up with), are excellent while Oliver is simply magnificent in what was probably his last great performance. He's a monster but a civilized monster which seems to make him all the more dangerous. A great movie and one that still seems to be sadly underrated.