Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Strangely this movie till now is so low rated by IMDb's users,perhaps the whole plot has some holes of course,but to me since the first time amazed me entirely,the story is such fictional but works very well,intriguing and mystery around the Nazi old formula of synthetic fuel,interesting idea to start,but actually the movie stand in two strong columns Scott and Brando in the final scene both are in clash what's they think about the perfect world for everybody,Marthe Keller is another highlights,and a dozen of famous actors whose ennobling the picture!!Resume:First watch: 1987 / How many: 4 / Source: TV-Cable TV-DVD / Rating: 8

LAPD detective George C. Scott investigates the murder of an old friend. More and more murders happen as the investigation leads him into a conspiracy plot involving a formula for synthetic fuel created by Nazi scientists in World War II.Overlong thriller with dull stretches. Main selling point being that it's the only movie to costar heavy hitters George C. Scott and Marlon Brando, coincidentally the only two actors to refuse their Best Actor Oscars. Brando only appears in three scenes. For some reason he insisted on making himself up to look ridiculous with fake teeth, a comb-over, and something stuck up his nose. Beside that, he does fine and so does Scott. Nothing special in the career of either man but not the stinker some make it out to be. The plot involving the formula conspiracy is interesting. It's not a terrible film. It goes on too long and the fact that everybody Scott talks to seems to be murdered almost immediately afterward is pretty funny. But it's watchable.

Steve Shagan wrote this novel long before the film emerged and became a prophetic warning to the world. After reading the story, I concluded the book is much more informative and a hell of a lot more more interesting. Still, the power of George C. Scott makes for a good understanding of the world's fuel problems and the greedy men who neatly arrange for it's sale and distribution. John G. Avidsen directed this film and although he used the star power of Marlon Brando to attract a large audience, he fail to capitalized on the combination of his leading men. The story as found in the novel begins with the murder of a retired LAPD police officer and assigned to Lt. Barney Caine (George C. Scott). Although evidence suggests the dead Officer died from Cocaine, Caine suspects it was blatant murder. With a gut feeling and growing suspicion of multiple involvement by others, Caine travels to Europe to learn who was behind the killings in America. This eventually leads to Adam Steiffel (Marlon Brando) a very rich and powerful Oil Executive based in the US who explains where and how the world works. A Plethora of Hollywood stars including John Gielgud, Marshall Thompson and Wolfgang Preiss, makes for a solid movie, but one wonders why Brando is only given minimal screen exposure. Still, with name recognition alone this will become a Classic George C. Scott milestone. ****

I went out and rented this film after thirty-odd years to simply see it again and to revisit my first impressions; and after thirty-five years in oil.I was actually in petrochemical engineering and construction---a builder, not a driller---but the drillers were my clients and I learned from both. Everything revolving around the basic premise of this film, the situations, the dialogue, the revelation of world economic truths, the actual history behind the modern-day, post-war plot line, the intrigue, and the superb conflict-acting by both George C. Scott and Marlon Brando made this cinematic foray into a little-known history of my former business all the more believable---and here's why: During the war, the Third Reich, and out of sheer necessity from its failed campaigns in both North Africa and the Caucasus Mountains, actually DID develop synthetic petroleum extracted from coal (called "coal hydrogenation", or "Kohleveredelung") in the Ruhr Basin for everything from lubricants to fuels to other synthetic by-products. The principal synthetic refineries at Merseburg, Magdeburg, and Gelsenkirchen, Germany, and Ploesti, Romania (11 facilities all-told), and a number of related others, were raided by both the US Army Air Forces and RAF Bomber Command as "maximum-effort" targets to be destroyed at all costs. The Wehrmacht had it and we didn't and we wanted it, and after the war, we got it and kept it, and kept it a secret, so the movie really is a loose form of cinéma vérité. This was more than alluded to in George C. Scott's final scene of excoriation of Marlon Brando's character, which was eerily similar to Ned Beatty's soliloquy and not-dissimilar treatment of Peter Finch in the earlier 1976 feature film, "Network", however, much shorter.The one tag line that brought it all into focus by Scott at the end was, "You're not in the oil business; you're in the oil SHORTAGE business!" Although panned by a number of reviewers (including The New York Times, amongst others) for everything from goofs (all movies have them), acting, and art direction, I gave it five stars, simply for the combination of a familiar hypothesis and idea, and with the raw dynamic acting talent of those two splendid late giants of the film industry, Scott and Brando.To someone as me who cut his teeth in the oil business out of college, and whose father actually bombed some of these plants from a B-17 during the war, it was once again mesmerizing to see this both rumored and storied mystery come to life.