it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Expensively produced adaptation of Ira Levin's novel is a combination of Marathon Man and The Omen. The Boys from Brazil should have been intense and gripping, but it's weighed down by a convoluted plot spanning the globe with too many characters whose function is to provide exposition. Franklin J. Schaffner who often helmed large scale productions: Patton, Pappilion, The Planet of the Apes, Nicholas and Alexandria is a plodding director and this material needs a visionary. The film is watchable with some effective scenes and performances, and a sweeping score to carry it, but the sluggish pace makes it a long 2 hours. Jeremy Black is amusing as the boys from Brazil, Uta Hagen is memorably intense, and Olivier in role that provided him with his final Oscar nomination is basically repeating his Marathon Man performance. And though I enjoyed Peck playing the bad guy, George C. Scott who was originally cast might have provided a terrifying powerhouse of a villain that would have ignited this film.

Based on the 1976 novel of the same name by Ira Levin concerning an attempt to establish the Fourth Reich by cloning Hitler, I saw the film for the first time about 10 years ago and did not particularly enjoy it but, this time, I thought that it was enormous fun. It's not the cleverest or deepest film in the world and it has a few campy moments but it makes for a great "Boys' Own" adventure as well as a very good paranoid sci-fi thriller. I had completely forgotten that the film was directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, who also directed my sixth favourite film "Planet of the Apes". I thought that "Nicholas and Alexandra" was the only other one of his films that I had seen but I was clearly wrong! In one of the oddest cases of casting against type in film history, Gregory "Integrity" Peck, easily one of my ten favourite actors, plays the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele. Casting against type can work very well - some of the best examples are seen in the two "Roots" miniseries where many very likable actors such as Lloyd Bridges, Ralph Waite, Chuck Connors and, most notably, Henry Fonda play racists - but I'm afraid that Peck was miscast in this instance. If I were Schaffner, I would have probably cast someone like Charlton Heston (who later played the role in "My Father, Rua Alguem 5555") or George C. Scott, both of whom had worked with him before and could be very creepy when they had to be. Now, Peck is an excellent actor and his performance is most certainly not awful. It is actually quite a good performance but it was not a role that played to his strengths. That said, he is at his best towards the end of the film when he is in his element and has to deliver an impassioned speech but, in stark contrast to his best and best known role, it is pro-racism rather than anti-racism! Incidentally, what was not known, at least for certain, when the film was made was that Mengele was still alive and living in Brazil. He died in February 1979, only five months after the film was released.The film benefits from another very strong cast member in the form of Laurence Olivier, another of my absolute favourite actors. He plays the role of an elderly concentration camp survivor turned Nazi hunter named Ezra Lieberman, a thinly veiled version of Simon Wiesenthal. In one of his last major roles, he is extremely good as Lieberman, playing the Nazi hunter as a man of great courage and principle who no longer has the credibility that he once did. However, Olivier loved accents and had a tendency to go over the top when using one, which happens on several occasions in the film, but it did little to detract from his otherwise great performance. Olivier received the last of ten acting Oscar nominations for the film. He was nominated for Best Actor for the ninth time, tying Spencer Tracy's record. It has yet to be surpassed. I mentioned earlier that there were a few elements of camp in the film and the biggest is probably the fight scene between the 62-year-old Peck and the 71-year-old Olivier. At their age, it was a bit on the silly side.The film has a great cast of superb actors in supporting and small roles such as James Mason, Uta Hagen (in a great cameo appearance as the former concentration guard Frieda Maloney), Denholm Elliott, John Dehner, Michael Gough, Lili Palmer, Walter Gotell, John Rubinstein, Anne Meara (who sadly died in May) and Bruno Ganz, who later played Hitler himself in "Der Untergang". I wouldn't call Steve Guttenberg a superb actor but he has a nice early supporting role as Barry Kohler, the young Jewish American man who alerts Lieberman to Mengele's plot. Jeremy Black, who plays the title characters, was not a very good actor and never appeared in another film but he only has a few scenes, all but one of which are very brief, so that's okay. The writing is quite strong. The same is true of Schaffner's direction though the film does get a little too gory towards the end.Overall, this is an extremely fun film which, while best enjoyed if not taken too seriously, does manage to raise some interesting questions.

I saw this movie when it first came out and I really enjoyed it. Compared to today's more authentic period pieces, it might not stand up that well… yes, the accents are pretty bad, for example… but all things considered I thought it was well done and I've seen it several times, the most recent being just last night. I loved the foreshadowing in the scene where one of the cloned boys lets Olivier's character into his house and is reflected an infinite number of times by the hallway mirrors… it appears to be nothing more than an odd directorial choice the first time through, but for those of us who know what's coming, it's a very clever device.The dam scene was very intense and from the Trivia notes I gather it was a real dam, not a special effect. Very striking sequence in a very interesting location.I didn't follow the bit about the dog's birthday… maybe that led somewhere in the book, but if it was explained in the film I must have missed it. There were a few other awkward moments here and there (I did chuckle at the cloning expert who could reproduce DNA at the drop of a hat yet demonstrated his high-tech theories and technique using a chalkboard and a film projector), but all in all I'd recommend this movie. Intriguing idea that translated very well to film, with a classic cast the likes of which we'll probably never see again.

If Hollywood starts turning out movies this good again, then maybe they will solve their problems with declining ticket sales.This movie grabs you from the opening scenes and keeps grips on you until the end. It makes me want to dig up the original novel (Ira Levin, Rosemary's Baby and a long list of others) and read it.I watched this on DVD the first time, which is the way to go. I've only seen scratchy versions chopped up by TV commercials before now. The DVD version looks like it's been taken off the master prints. It does not have the scratches and other defects of a circulation print.I knocked off a star because of Gregory Peck's congenital inability to master foreign accents and some continuity errors. These minor flaws are easy to ignore. Hollywood should learn from it past successes, and this is one.