Marathon Man starts out as a political thriller, but turns into a high intensity heist film starring Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, Roy Scheider, and William Devane. Hoffman plays grad student Babe Levy who, after being haunted by the suicide of his fathers suicide years before, falls into a former Nazi doctors (Olivier) quest to claim the diamonds that were used as payment for release from a concentration camp years before.
Even though the story isn't as tight as it could have been and Scheider is way underused, Marathon Man is a Hitchcockian thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat as we follow Hoffman's pacifist character through situations he's not prepared to deal with.
One of the ironic things about the film is that it has a pseudo Hitchcock plot and it stars the lead in his first American film (Olivier in Rebecca) and one of the leads in his final film (Devanne in Family Plot).
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