Marathon Man

Marathon Man (1976) is John Schlesinger's paranoid thriller you can watch online on iFILM. Dustin Hoffman plays Thomas "Babe" Levy, a New York history grad student and obsessive long-distance runner who has no idea what he is about to be pulled into.

Babe's older brother Doc (Roy Scheider) poses as a smooth oil executive but actually works for a shadowy government outfit. When a fugitive Nazi war criminal, Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier), slips into the United States to recover a fortune in hidden diamonds, Babe suddenly becomes a target. The interrogation in a dentist's chair, built around the chilling question "Is it safe?", is one of the most agonizing scenes ever filmed. From there it turns into a chase across Manhattan, where Babe's only real weapon is a marathon runner's legs. William Devane and Marthe Keller round out the cast.

The screenplay was written by William Goldman from his own novel. Olivier earned an Oscar nomination for his quietly monstrous Szell. As the legend goes, Hoffman exhausted himself with real sleep deprivation for the part, leaving Olivier baffled by the method. Stream Marathon Man (1976) online on iFILM.