Marathon Man

Doc Levy (Roy Scheider) is an American secret agent who has been running interference between the US government and escaped Nazi war criminal S zell (Laurence Olivier). Believing that Doc has stolen a valuable cache of gems, Szell emerges from his South American hi ding place and heads f or New York. He has Doc killed, then kidnaps Doc's in-the-dark brother B abe (Dustin Hoffman). Repeating the ph rase "Is it safe?" over and over, Szell, a onetime concentration camp dentist, tries to extract informati on from Babe by performing sadistic "oral surgery" upon him. Babe, who s till doesn't know about the gems, escapes, breaking his own self-imposed rule of nonvio lence to defend himself against his pursuers. The fox be comes the hound when Babe overpowers Szell and forces the old man to swa llow his valuable diamonds. Marathon Man traces Babe Levy's progression from pacifistic naif to cynical street-smart scrapper.