Hoffman overacted and Olivier underacted. Between the two of 'em it balanced out sort of and let the storyline carry the audience along. There were some sappy parts with Hoffman but overall his performance was fine. The tone of the film wasn't oppressive so much as ratcheting up the tension with each scene. A good movie, maybe the best of the 'Nazi's are still around' genre.

Possibly the best of the Nazi hunter movies, well the best thriller in the genre anyway. It's not as solid or authentic as The Odessa File before it - a nicely genuine and believable Nazi hunter movie, but it adds real thriller excitement in a few quite hard hitting scenes for its era. Schlesinger uses his trademark visual impact to good effect and the Oscar winning Goldman script is just as flashy, making Marathon Man an overtly confident and ambitious thriller.It has intrigue and plot twists to keep your mind alert but this can get you dizzy as you're heavily engaged in the visual action, so I always found trying to work it out without missing any of the narrative very demanding. But the acting is even more starry in this flash movie. It's Olivier versus Hoffman and I do mean versus, in a celebrated classical meets method acting showdown. Having said that Roy Scheider is the best thing in the movie for me with a terrific no nonsense performance that cuts through all the intrigue and suits the thriller element the best.A classic movie thriller that maybe suffers from its ambition and showiness and possibly its age judging by the surprisingly low ratings here. When it came out it was much hyped and talked about. Maybe there've been too many thrillers since with licence to be more graphic and clever still which have overshadowed this one. But for its charisma and ambition it is still a belter for me, way up there in the thriller ranks, being easily more involving than most that came after.

I realize thrillers are tough to do. I get it. But this was such a good set up and then hysterical let down, it left me frustrated, actually furious. There were a couple plot points, a couple of lines of dialogue, and more than a couple of Hoffman's histrionics that were so clunky it totally took me out of the story. Terrible. I would not recommend it, and I will not watch the whole thing ever again.

Dustin Hoffman is excellent as the protagonist in this well-written crime thriller set in New York City. Laurence Olivier is also very good as the antagonist.It's quite a complicated plot, involving family, Nazis, Jews, diamonds and running.