Marathon Man: A great classic film with some annoying moments (SPOILERS)

There are going to be some spoilers in here because I actually would like to discuss some elements of the film that might give away a bit of the story. Therefore, if you don't want to know anything about the movie I will come straight out and say that I think you should see this movie because even though it is more than 40 years old it is much better than a lot of the movies made today with much higher budgets and far more advanced technology.

Plus it is kind of nice to see Dustin Hoffman in what I consider to be his prime acting years.

I am giving away massive plot points in this writeup, so this is your last warning if you haven't seen this movie!

Marathon Man

The film is classified as a thriller and it is definitely that. It focuses on Thomas Levy (Hoffman) who everyone calls "Babe" for some reason and he is a relatively normal dude who is in New York City pursuing a PhD in history. He also does a bunch of running to prepare for a marathon which is where the title of the film comes from.

While we are being introduced to him we are also made aware of other characters who are involved in some sort of criminal enterprise that we are not made aware of until much later in the film.

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All we know is that one of the people involved in this criminal enterprise is Babe's brother Henry, who has convinced everyone that he is a oil company executive and we are slowly made to understand that he actually is a courier who transports diamonds to a ex Nazi commander to live off of. This Nazi commander is known but he is protected by some organization (presumed to be the US government) in exchange for him locating and turning in other Nazi war criminals.

However, at one point this Nazi, whose name is Dr. Christian Szell and is known as the "White Angel" stops trusting all of his couriers and decides to have all of them killed including Babe's brother.

This is how Babe, the "Marathon Man" finds himself hunted as it is presumed by the White Angel that he is in on it and is therefore a danger to him.

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Why is it good?

The film is good because it doesn't follow the usual cookie cutter format of predictability that we have developed in recent times. You honestly don't really know what is going on a lot of the time but then it all comes together towards the end in a brilliant climax. The characters are all brilliantly covered by the actors and one of them, Laurence Olivier who plays Dr. Szell was nominated for an Oscar (didn't win) for his performance.

There are also so pretty gruesome scenes involving what I think most people are afraid of and that is dentistry torture.

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Problems I have with the overall film

So I've basically given away a large portion of the film and I hope you heeded my spoiler warning at the start. But now I am going to talk about a few parts of the film that rubbed me the wrong way because they don't make sense.

• Babe's apartment gets broken into many times by multiple different people, none of which have keys or appeared to force their way in in any capacity. This film takes place in New York City and if you know anything about most apartments in NYC, they normally have restricted entrances where you have to be buzzed in and then the actual doors of all the units I have seen are heavily reinforced with multiple, very strong, locks.

• When trapped in the bathroom of his house, the people who silently broke into his place, which i presume was thoroughly locked after being broken into twice, experience great difficulty getting into the bathroom which has a weak bathroom door and doesn't even appear to have a lock at all. Instead they use a crowbar to take the door off its hinges and at one point are even moving the wall. WTF?

• When Babe is being chased down the street in his underpants and covered in blood, no one notices. Keep in mind that this is NYC, and even if he was down a back alley in the middle of the night, someone is going to notice that

• In the final scene where Babe forces an employee to leave a pump station at gunpoint, he is in the building for a long time after the man flees and it is in the middle of a crowded public park. No authorities turn up during or even long after the confrontation that takes place inside. This is impractical considering that any public park in New York there are always several cops on premises.

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So that was just a little bit of superfluous complaining on my part. Overall, this is a better film that then last half dozen or so I have seen and they managed to do it with a budget of a mere $6 million and exactly zero CGI (because it didn't exist.)

If you are like me and are kind of getting tired of modern films and how predictable they are, I highly recommend that you give this one a go. I don't think you will regret it, despite the shortcomings that I listed in the end.