BEFORE: Yes, it's the day of the NYC Marathon, and I've already watched "Run, Fatboy, Run", so this is the next best thing.
THE PLOT: A graduate history student is unwittingly caught in the middle of an international conspiracy involving stolen diamonds, an exiled Nazi war criminal, and a rogue government agent.
AFTER: Dustin Hoffman (last seen in "Finding Neverland") plays the every-man caught up in international affairs - he thinks his brother is a jet-setting oil company executive, but he's actually an agent for some shadow government division that cleans up after the FBI and the CIA. His father was linked to the McCarthy hearings somehow, possibly committing suicide after being named as a Communist sympathizer.
And the main villain, played by Laurence Olivier (last seen in "The Jazz Singer") is a wanted ex-Nazi who moonlights as a dentist - OK, so he uses dentistry as torture (who doesn't?), which makes an odd sense, if he used to pull the gold teeth from the mouths of concentration camp victims.
At least in tonight's film we find out what everyone is after - a safe-deposit box full of diamonds. Last night's film left the contents of the MacGuffin Box a total mystery. However, for all the intrigue, there wasn't TOO much action - knowing that Hoffman's character was a marathon runner did help explain his ability to run away from danger, however.
NITPICK POINT: How plausible is it that anyone would recognize a Nazi war criminal in 1976? I mean, it would be at least 30 years since anyone had seen him - for Szell to be recognized on the streets of NYC by a former concentration camp inmate seems a bit of a stretch. The movie even points out that he used to have a full head of hair, and then was bald 30 years later - I'm sure he made an impression on people, but wouldn't they remember him the way he looked in the 1940's?
Also starring Roy Scheider (last seen in "The French Connection"), William Devane (last seen in "Space Cowboys"), Marthe Keller and Fritz Weaver (last seen in "The Thomas Crown Affair").
RATING: 5 out of 10 cavities
It's completely plausible for someone to recognize another person after 30 years, especially when that person's face is burned into your memory as the person responsible for your imprisonment and torture, plus the deaths of friends and family. Hair loss and some wrinkles don't completely alter someone's looks.
ReplyDeleteI agree (sort of) - but there can be a huge difference between the way a man looks at say, 40, and the way he looks at 70. (I'm allowing for the span of years between 1945 and 1976)
ReplyDeleteOlivier was 70 years old at the time of this film - and if you look at his Wikipedia page, you'll see a photo of him from 1939. Very different. Maybe if you had a picture array of 40-year olds and you had to match them up with pictures of the same men in their 70's, you might be able to do it...
But this is a woman who's probably seen thousands of faces since 1945. Many of whom were probably men with white hair. Yet she spots the "White Angel" on a VERY crowded street in New York's Diamond District. Implausible, I think.
The movie even says that his white hair was his single most prominent, identifying feature - he must have had a lot of it. But in 1976, he was mostly bald - so what was she using to identify him?
I think it might even be more likely that the woman was so traumatized by her time at Auschwitz that she freaked out and yelled "White Angel!" EVERY time she saw someone with white hair. And on this day, on that street, she just got very very lucky.
In other words, even a stopped clock is right twice a day...