Wonderful character development!

Truly Dreadful Film

Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

In first minutes main hero, Barney Caine explained why is rude - he was pulled in case at Sunday, while spent his time with his son. Like other detective was happy to do it ... Just first in list of nonsense, bad dialog. Dead body count raises. and barely recognizable Marlon Brando appears. I thought that I seen all his movies, but this one I missed over decades. I guess with reason - probably weakest his movie. And he looks awful, although that's perfect for role. First 50 minutes were pretty messy. Things gone better with part in Germany, EU. Martha Keller was best part of movie, and I dare to say that some movie with her character as main character would be much more interesting and realistic. Because all this oil like fuel from coal thing was just forced. Yes, during WWII Germany was forced to solve somehow fuel problem for war machinery. But that was not normal situation, and they did not care about price of that process. Pretty much nonsense that 35-40 years later nobody couldn't discover it again. Or even some better way. But main stupidity is that we need gas for cars from domestic sources. What about electric power ? That was in in those years too. But whole thing would be less bad if Barney listened to what John Gielgud's character said him. He failed in that, in bad script way. Authors of movie failed in making main character likeable, at beginning. What was the point of all it ? To feed conspiracy theorists ? Ending was a bit of funny. Main villain solved it all from chair, wit couple moves, one phone call and very short negotiation. Greatness of Marlon Brando is that he played even it well.

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.

Caught this while doing some work at my desk and saw it had George C Scott, a favorite of mine. It had a really bad feel to it on a made for TV movie level, so I kept it in the background so I could get some snippets as this looked really really boring and it's all that was on at the time. Anyway if your political bents swing towards the Greenpeace crowd than you will rate this a 7 to 10, since I'm on the other end of the political spectrum it gets a 2. I love secret Nazi formula thriller stuff, and one that holds as much promise as the "formula" here did along with Scott should have come much better. That said the movies only redeeming qualities was it's similarities of Brando's character to Dick Chaney, and the speech in the end when Scott says "Your the reason why old people have to eat out of garbage cans!". That and a weird scene with strippers on stage in Germany with swastika pasties on, that was kind of interesting, you had to be there. I think both of these actors pulled some stunts during the academy awards and they were the forerunners of todays mostly leftist Hollywood actor crowd, and this movie has a clear political bent to appeal to that audience with dialog like the old people and trash cans. I'm surprised he didn't mention anything about soup lines, but I might have just missed it as this movie was hard to stay focused on and for once I preferred to do some work than follow this boring drivel. 2 of 10 stars, Scott didn't make all that many truly great movies in his career, but I certainly remember the ones he did do, this one wont be remembered as one though.

This is an excellent, thought provoking plot which could, with a little imagination, be closer to the truth today than when filmed 26 years ago. Delivered by two actors among other greats, Marlon Brando and George C.Scott weave a convoluted story line which centers around a formula to make oil an obsolete fuel. Jump to present day with Exxon/Mobile posting record profits of $8.4 billion the first quarter of 2006 against a back drop of record profits in 2005, Brando's comment about, "We Are The Arabs", becomes even more poignant as gas prices continue to climb over $3.00 per gallon. It makes one wonder, particularly since the known fact that our present leader and his father have been in bed with the Arabs the last 15 years or longer and the VP, an old oil man himself, "We are the Arabs", indeed! Another movie that broaches oil greed is "Local Hero" with Burt Lancaster playing the part of CEO Armand Hammer and his quest for acquisition of land on the northern edge of Scotland and his description of the Scottish people as "blue eyed Arabs". Since the days of John D Rockefeller, oil has, for all practical purposes, ruled the world. How ironic that we are now at war with a country with the world's 2nd largest oil reserves and our leader was the one pulling the trigger.