p e n g u i n d e v i l

It was an exciting Sunday movie day, after Coffy, we watched a couple of nice thrillers which are always a good way to pass a day at home. Plus, I’d been wanting to see both of these for quite a while. We started off with a great one, Marathon Man. For those who don’t remember this story, based on an also great William Goldman novel, it’s a intriguing story about a graduate student who gets a surprise visit from his brother, and then everything going to hell. Dustin Hoffman is the naive student, the late, great Roy Schieder is his “businessman” brother and Laurence Olivier is the elderly evil Nazi Doctor Christian Szell.

See, Doctor Szell is one of those “Odessa” type Nazis who fled to South America after the war. Since then, he has been involved in some financial goings-on that involve some government forces and his brother Klaus, up in New York City. Things get shaky for Dr. Szell though, once his brother dies in an automobile altercation he sets off by yelling “Juden” at an irate motorist. Szell feels the needs to go to New York City, which seems to be a dangerous place to be an infamous Nazi doctor who worked in a Death Camp.

But the plot gets thicker, Roy Scheider is actually some kind of secret agent in Europe who is also involved somehow with this Nazi and he heads back to New York City, where he visits his brother and then is promptly murdered by Szell. At this point, all sorts of people decide that his brother knows something and try to extract the information from him. Hoffman, of course, knows nothing about any of it, but he is in for a heck of an education.

While the second half of the move is certainly the most exciting portion, as a top-rate thriller with dental torture, lies and betrayals, chases, gun fire and all sorts of action, I personally prefer the first half, as I am rather impartial towards Hoffman, but I quite like Schieder (and his character), so once he leaves the scene, the movie seems a little less interesting. But it is all in all a great movie, quite thrilling and Dustin Hoffman plays the “naive guy who is forced to pull his head out of the ground and face reality” character quite convincingly. And honestly, and maybe sadly, towards the end I started feeling pity for Dr. Szell. Yes, he was a terrible man who did (well, still does, it would seem) terrible things to people, but he was also just a greedy and alone old man, who took a great risk to satisfy that greed. I know, it doesn’t sound like a sympathetic situation, but there was something so desperate about him that I couldn’t help it.

To keep the day thrilling, and to keep with the “wanted Nazi” theme, we also watched Eye of The Needle, which was one of my favorites when I was a teenager. It didn’t seem quite as thrilling now, but I still do like it and it has some good tension in the last half. Donald Sutherland is Der Nagel, a Nazi spy working amidst the British military as the preparations are being made for the invasion of europe. We follow him for a while as he goes about his business, but then it starts to fall apart and he becomes a fugitive, right as Berlin orders him to meet with a u-boat and return home. Of course all sorts of things go wrong with his attempt at rendezvousing with the U-boat, and he ends up shipwrecked on an island with a population of 4. Once he gets here is where the movie really comes into its own, as the island features a young unfulfilled wife with a bitter and unpleasant husband who is wheel-chair bound, and a radio-set that would be just perfect for him to try and contact his submarine… As one would expect from a good thriller, one thing leads to another and things really start to heat up, in a variety of ways.