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The Boys From Brazil (1978)
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Movie Review by Jarrod
April 20th, 2008
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"Who would believe such a preposterous story?" asks Laurence Olivier at one point during 'The Boys from Brazil", and I am inclined to agree with that sentiment, as this is one of the most sensationally silly movies I have ever seen. Based on a novel by Ira Levin, 'Boys from Brazil' is a far-fetched thriller that features two tremendous actors in hammy roles, and Olivier actually received an Oscar nomination. I don't see why. His performance requires him to adopt a phony German accent that often renders much of what he says incomprehensible. He plays a veteran Nazi hunter named Ezra Lieberman, obviously inspired by Simon Wiesenthal. Lieberman is contacted by Barry Kohler (Steve Guttenberg), a young man in Paraguay who is staking out secret meetings between Nazi fugitives and recording them. Lieberman does not take Kohler that seriously at first, until he tells him that he has picked up on a plot being hatched by Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck), the notorious doctor from Auschwitz who conducted gruesome experiments on the inmates there. Mengele was, after the war, the most wanted war criminal in the world, and he eluded justice until his death in 1979. He probably spent the rest of his wretched life living in fear of capture by the Israelis, thus sharing the fate of Eichmann, who was tried and executed in Jerusalem in 1962. Here, we have a different Mengele. He intends on restoring the Reich, and plans a series of assassinations. The targets are all 65-year-old civil servants from various parts of Europe, the United States, and Canada. Why are these men supposed to die? It all has to do with an elaborate, bizarre, and hopelessly absurd scheme involving children, who all happen to be clones of Adolf Hitler, clones created using his cellular material, and who were adopted by different families after the war.
Hitler did not have blue eyes or black hair, but these kids do. Mengele rants and raves about the Aryan race, yet none of these clones have blond hair and blue eyes, the two physical traits the Nazis found most desirable. Among Mengele's cohorts is an old SS acquaintance, Eduard Seibert (James Mason). Lieberman proves troublesome, disrupting Mengele's plans, and this eventually leads to a comical confrontation between them, and they wrestle on the floor, biting and hitting each other, Peck even shooting Oliver before getting attacked by a pack of Dobermans. Peck was 62 when he appeared in this film, and Oliver was 71. To see them fighting with one another is remarkably entertaining, though I would think it hurt each of them a great deal. Peck is brilliant, but his performance is so over-the-top, it borders on farce. Heck, it probably is supposed to be farce. He doesn't have much in the way of an accent, but his voice is deep and resonant, all the better when he utters line like "Shut up, you ugly b*tch" or "He has betrayed me, betrayed you, betrayed the Aryan race".
Olivier played a Nazi himself in Marathon Man, but this time is the good guy; Peck, usually always the good guy (his Atticus Finch was honored by the AFI as the greatest hero in American cinema), gets the chance to be evil, and he holds nothing back. There is a lot of nice scenery and varied locales, the streets of Vienna, a large dam covered in snow, the jungles and cities of Paraguay, and the simplistic, picturesque beauty of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, famous for its Amish country. Look for Rosemary Harris, better known for playing Aunt May in the Spider-Man franchise, as the wife of one of the assassination victims, and Bruno Ganz (who would later play Hitler in Downfall) as biology professor Bruckner, who gets to explain the process of cloning to Lieberman, who is probably more interested than the movie's audience will be. This film is so kooky you cannot help but be entertained by it, but it does go on too long, clocking in at slightly more than two hours.
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 | Zombie Boy
Apr 20, 2008 3:38 AM
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I had a far different experience watching this film than you did. Yes, it is sort of a silly plot, but remember the time frame that book was written in, and this subsequent movie made: given the current scientific climate, the cloning theme was prescient. I am sure at the time it was a frightening concept; it is only rendered absurd due to our current knowledge. Also, at the time the Cold War was in full swing, and the general public of the USA was possibly even more jingoistic than they are today. This sort of foreigner paranoia probably went down their gullets like a cold glass of iced tea on a hot summer day.
For me, I loved the Levin book and was thoroughly entertained by Olivier. Peck was ridiculous, but it was nice to see him not be a block of wood for a change.
Brett Ratner is set to remake this film. Hopefully he doesn't turn it into some terrible fiasco like The Island. |
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