Marathon Man - film review

Marathon Man is a 1976 thriller film with impeccable credentials and an enduring reputation, yet until recently, I'd never seen it. I'm glad to have repaired this omission, and I felt that, nearly forty years on, the film stands up very well. It's gripping from start to finish, while its violence, rather controversial at the time, remains frightening.

Dustin Hoffman plays a history student who has never quite got over his father's suicide. He is something of a loner, and when he is not studying, he practises marathon running. He falls for a glamorous fellow student, played by Marthe Keller, and they become lovers. When he introduces her to his older brother (Roy Scheider), however, there is some tension between the pair. Is the girl playing a game of some sort? And why were the pair of them mugged by two men in suits while out in the park?

What we know - but Hoffman's character doesn't - is that the brother is not an oil executive but some kind of secret agent. And he is mixed up with people who, for whatever reason, are keeping a close eye on a former Nazi (Laurence Olivier, no less) who has emerged from hiding in South America following the death of his own brother. When the Nazi comes to New York, things turn very unpleasant indeed.

The screenplay was written by William Goldman, and based on his own novel. Goldman is a gifted writer, and his expertise shows. So does that of the director, the estimable John Schlesinger. Really, this is a good example of how to write a thriller that grabs you from the start and never lets go. Today, writers such as Lee Child do this equally well. If you enjoyed Jack Reacher (as I did) then it's extremely likely that you'll enjoy Marathon Man. Though I suspect many readers of this blog will have watched it years before I belatedly caught up with it..  

Jack Reacher - movie review

Jack Reacher is the film version of Lee Child's best-seller One Shot. There's been a lot of debate about whether Tom Cruise is appropriately cast as the much taller Reacher, but for me, this is not a key issue. What really matters is whether Cruise captures the essence of the character. I'd say that he's not perfect, but pretty good, and certainly good enough. And the decision to cast Robert Duvall and the menacing Werner Herzog in smaller but important roles was quite inspired - and I bet it was a real thrill for Lee Child to see these two appearing in the first film of his work.

The story begins with a sniper firing six times and killing five people. The overwhelmingly likely suspect is rounded up and soon reduced to a coma. His lawyer, Rosamund Pike (whose professional dress code is rather different from that of all the other female lawyers I know) is thrown into conflict with the D.A., who just happens to be her dad. The suspect, for mysterious reasons, scrawls a message, "Get Jack Reacher". And as if by magic, Reacher appears.

I was baffled by the scene in which Pike questions Cruise and tells him that the conversation is legally privileged. Given that he is not her client, this can only be right if American law is significantly different from English law. Well, I can only presume that it is, but this did jar with me. On the whole, however, the film sprints along in the style we associate with Bond and Bourne, and it makes for good light entertainment.

Lee Child takes the craft of the thriller seriously, which helps to explain his massive success. I've read and enjoyed a number of Lee Child books, but not One Shot. One of the others borrowed a famous plot device from Agatha Christie, and the same trick is pulled here. The excellent director, Christopher McQuarrie, does not go into much detail about the motive for the crime, and we don't have much backstory about Herzog's character. This is a real pity - I suppose McQuarrie felt these elements needed to be cut to maintain pace. So overall, not a masterpiece, but good fun. And despite the casting of Cruise, I'm sure the film will make even more people want to read Lee Child's bestsellers. They will, I think, find them even more entertaining than this lively and action-packed movie.

Echo Burning

I’ve finished listening to the abridged audio CD of Lee Child’s thriller Echo Burning, which I mentioned recently. It turned out to be very good car listening. Lively and interesting, without demanding so much attention that I risked crashing into a speed camera. In short, it did what a good thriller should do – it kept me entertained from start to finish.

I liked the comment made in response to my last blog post that Child’s Jack Reacher is really an updated cowboy type of hero. He’s strong, very good in a fight or with a gun, and his heart is in the right place. He turns down tempting offers from attractive but potentially dangerous women, and he is kind to small children – in this case, the young daughter of a woman who may or may not have killed her rather horrible husband.

The central mystery is whether the woman in the case is hunter or hunted, and Child keeps us guessing quite nicely. I rather liked the fact that there was a small verbal clue to the mystery which Jack Reacher failed to spot – so the guy is flawed after all!

I’m not pretending that books like this compare to, say, the best of Ruth Rendell in literary terms. But writing a really successful thriller requires real craftsmanship. Child has the ability to make it look easy. But it isn’t, and that is why he deserves his extraordinary success.

Starting a Thriller

I’ve been meaning to devour another Lee Child for ages, after loving The Visitor, and now I’ve just begun to listen to an audio book version of Echo Burning, featuring his regular hero Jack Reacher. It’s made a good start.

Lee Child has not become a global best-seller by accident. There are reasons for his success (just as there are always reasons for great success) and writers like me can, I’m sure, learn a good deal from studying the methods of such a writer, even if his books are different from the type of story that we usually produce.

Echo Burning begins at a breakneck pace, and that is, of course, part of Child’s secret. Reacher escapes from his hotel room in Texas just in time to evade arrest by a cop whom he attacked (under much provocation) in a bar the previous night. He wants to hitch a lift out of town, and is soon picked up by a glamorous woman who interrogates him about his background. It becomes clear she is after something – but can she be trusted?

Meanwhile, a trio of hired killers murder a man whose car they stop in the middle of nowhere. What are they up to, and what will happen if and when their paths cross that of Reacher?

I want to find out more, which means that Lee Child has already hooked me, as he has hooked so many other readers. I shall report in due course on whether the novel ultimately lives up to its early promise.