Rewatch of the Week: Is it Safe?

Welcome to chariots of fire on crack. For the first hour of this we get two running parallel stories. Both seem equally intense. In New York, Dustin Hoffman is obsessively running across Central Park, he's caught in a trance and continuously checking his watch as though competing with someone or trying to outrun something. At the same time, he's studying at University, a quiet student wrapped up in a dissertation to do with his father. It is heavily hinted his father killed himself with a bullet to the head and the scenes where they show it in flashbacks are so dreamy and surreal. Hoffman morbidly still keeps the gun in his draw as though waiting for some opportunity to use it and release this hidden side to him. There's something undeniably psychological driving him.

First of all that continuous watch checking. Always heavy when someone's up to that business. Need to give it a rest. At least here though it seems like it's building to something. There's a reason for its inclusion to the character. I still don't understand why Denzel Washington times everything he does in his Equaliser remakes. Gives me proper PTSD do clock watchers. If you're at work I get it, we all do it but on your own time? Put the damn watch away! Reminds me of my own father Big Phils relentless day planning and persistent ETAs. Haven't got time for ETAs me, I get there when I get there. If something wants to happen to me it'll happen. Honestly, an obsessive clock watcher can be worse than a hoverer on some occasions. Why can't these people embrace the randomness of life? They'll be planning their own fucking funeral if you let them.

Other thing that caught my attention was all the running through Central Park. Went there once and where ever you go you're mobbed by runners at nearly all times of the day. Only time I wasn't was when I went for a stroll at 4am cause of the jet lag. Went on a proper thrill seeking tangent and was hoping to see some Cruising/The Brave One type shit going on but can't say I witnessed any such after dark activities. At all times other than that though you have to be constantly on the look out for runners. They think it's their territory. Found them almost as irritating as cyclists in the UK who ride two a breast. Wanted to unload some kung fu on these fuckers. The weird thing is I don't think they've got anywhere else to go. It's such a strange culture. I didn't see them running anywhere else. Does no one do those sexy sprints across blocks like Michael Fassbender in Shame? Perhaps cause he's British he doesn't follow the customs. Either way I was not on this running vibe. Don't know what that's about. I was just trying to cover every inch of the place, taking strolls listening to Danny Brown. Living my best life, not running down the clock like these health freaks.

Over in France, Hoffmans characters brother played by Roy Scheider is on some spy shit. I would never allow a damn yank to be James Bond but Mr Scheider is so good that you could almost make a consideration to the rule. If you're a fan of Sorcerer, then you're going to love this movie, there's that same Neo noir vibe that kicks in from the outset. Movies of the 70s are coming more and more of a delicacy to me. They're a glimpse at future we never had. A future we could have had if we behaved a little better.

In 1977, just one year after Marathon Man, a huge sci fi blockbuster arrived. Star Wars wasn't just some blockbuster that everyone piled up to see one year, it literally changed the culture of cinema forever. Its impact can't be denied, it literally reset the target age of audience films were marketed at.

Throughout the 60s cinema really cemented itself as an art form and continued to grow in the 70s showing its full capabilities. You went to the cinema that's what you expected to see. European arthouse was booming. You'd go the cinema and come out discussing the French new wave, a new Bergmann or Tarkovsky movie. These movements and directors dominated the scene in such a way the US began to fall behind and so the only way they could keep up and have something to be even remotely proud of was to change their entire strategy.

They came up with a model which seems insane today. Studios basically gave a lot of money to up and coming directors and said here make what you want.

Wallah, New Hollywood era begins. This saw the rise of Americas most talented directors such as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford

Coppola, William Friedkin, Peter Bogdanovich, Arthur Penn, Dennis Hopper etc. It was a time that promoted auteurs and little studio involvement. Life was good.

All this came to a stand still when Star Wars came out. In 1975, Jaws had committed the great cinematic crime of beating the B's at their own game. Studios began to see the success of Roger Corman's flicks at the box office and decided to start creating their own brand of b movies with a bigger budget. Effectively almost killing off the competition and nearly putting a bunch of good dudes out of business.

The big studios wouldn't really take a swing at the pornos, which were equally raking in the big bucks as they were too scared to show some penetration. That's where pornographers such as Damiano, The Mitchell Brothers and Metzger found a gap in the market. Consequently, the likes of Marilyn Chambers, Linda Lovelace and John Holmes became big stars. Up the porno chic! Bring it back.

About the closest Hollywood got to making a sex film with big stars was watching Brando getting his arse a good seeing to in Last Tango in Paris, which remains perhaps the greatest sex film ever made despite being soft and not hardcore. I for one, would have loved to have seen Hollywood go hardcore and see what kind of wild movies they could come out with. I'm sure like Disney in the streaming era, certain "classics" would simply disappear or be subject to a few cuts here and there to hide the heavy past.

Of course, it would be foolish to say that Jaws and Star Wars are bad movies. Completely the wrong move. They're absolute masterpieces and that's what makes their cinematic crimes of de-ageing the cinematic audience and killing off the independents so damn irritating. You couldn't hate them even if you tried. First it was Spielberg and then it was his bloody mate George Lucas that came in and fucked up everything for all the little guys and the auteur purists out there.

Wasn't til long after a lot of the New Hollywood directors films were hurt massively at the box office. Scorsese's New York New York flopped massively and then we get to Heaven's Gate. Heaven's Gate was seen as the end of New Hollywood. According to many critics of the time it was a complete failure and couldn't recuperate its large costs. Following that disaster, studios were too afraid to put money behind the youth again and so commenced the era of studio puppets. I'm unwilling to bring myself to even watch Heaven's Gate. I hear its actually quite a good movie and has been critically re-assessed. Just can't watch it and I'll forever undeservedly hate Michael Cimino for putting the final nail in the coffin.

You can see the effect it had on Roger Corman in his follow up to Death Race 2000 called Death Sport. This time David Carradine is donning a robe, light sabers and laser blasters whilst the originals satirical political commentary becomes almost entirely lost.

There's a strong argument to be made that it's cause of Lucas and Spielberg that we got the whole Marvelisation of cinema many years later and now we're trapped in an endless cycle of superhero movies that feels like it's gone on longer than the western and has been a lot less willing to evolve without an Italian take over.

Rant kind of over I think. What I was trying to say there was I like these 70s movies because they show what could have been. When you watch them they're way more adult oriented, socially critical, subversive and experimental than anything you're likely to see in cinema today.

Challenging cinema has been replaced by Conservative cinema. It's fucking boring. Marathon Man is actually directed by Jonathan Schlesinger. A filmmaker you may know from the movie Midnight Cowboy. Notoriously, the first and only X rated movie to win best picture. Midnight Cowboy isn't just a movie, it's an era. A cultural reference point. We're talking about the time of Travis Bickle and the story of 42nd Street. The Deuce as it was known back then before Guiliani ruined it like he ruins everything. A street filled with wall to wall grindhouses. Old cinemas left from the theatre days which would show kung fu movies, horror, artsy eurosleaze and even x rated films.

These shocking movies actually kept the business going in the area. An extremely creative period that was in fact so creative it was under constant threat of destroying itself with the sexual activity and crack that fuelled it. It was dangerous cinema both on the screen and where it was viewed. You had to avoid the cum on seats, drug dealers, muggers and the horny gentlemen. Cinemagoers demanded the films show them the most disgusting and depraved shit imaginable or they'd start destroying the cinema. Every time you went the cinema you risked your life. Let's just say it wasn't the comfort of the multiplex or your own living room.

Marathon Man actually has a lot of the old grindhouse thrills in there. Early on Scheider when he's on his missions in France, he's violently ambushed in a hotel room. He's meant to be doing a deal with an ex Nazi called Szell but known as "the white angel" for his ideal striking blonde hair played by theatre nerd Laurence Olivier. The deal is Scheider gets Szell access to his diamonds from a locked safe (originally stolen from his Jew victims) in exchange for other Nazis whereabouts hiding across the globe in the 1970s.

Unfortunately for Szell this goes very wrong and the deal is off the cards when his brother is killed by an insane New Yorker. Absolutely love this by the way. The brother is killed off by an angry American with no connection to the spies whatsoever. He just turns up fuming and still hasn't forgiven the Germans, suspecting them all of being Nazis.

I fully rate it because we get a random wild car chase in the opening act that completely affects the plot when it should have nothing to do with it. Establishes this film as nuts and really gets the wheels in motion. It's like something out of a Coen Brothers movie where absurd random events just happen and any character can be killed off at any moment.

The killing of his brother clearly rattles Szell, who grows paranoid and wants to kill off everyone connected with the deal. Cue the hotel ambush on Roy Scheider, which is one of the most badass things I've ever seen in the history of cinema. He's on a Paris balcony just taking in the Eiffel tower and this fella comes at him from behind with a sharp wire round the throat. Big boy Roy quickly sticks out his hand to stop it closing round his throat, which results in a proper Friday the 13th part 3D like moment where blood spurts out his hand all over the place. A bit of blood from the hand is nothing for old Roy and he beats the living shit out of the Intruder. What a fucking scene.

After his near death encounter, Roy flees to New York to hide out and see his brother. Thus the everyday man is brought in to the action. I'm obsessed with that persona of Dustin Hoffmans in the 70s. He's no tough guy or hard man like his contemporaries were. He's no Bobby Deniro or Al Pacino. He's just a weak little 60s counter cultural hippie dude you know.

What I respect is that he never tries to act tough or be something he's not but he doesn't shy away from typically violent and action heavy roles. He embraces his own patheticness and what's exciting in his movies is seeing him find his own inner violence as part of a cinematic journey. Straw Dogs being another fine example. No one understood violence like Sam Peckinpah and his story really brings out the truth in that we're all capable of it, no matter how we hide it and finds it within every day man Hoffman. This film does it in a similar way. You can always tell its brewing in Hoffman too with that gun in the draw business. He wants to let this side to him out. He wants to explode like Michael Douglas in Falling Down.

Marathon Man offers this incredible experience where one day you're a quiet student who keeps to himself and next minute you're on the maddest night of your life having your teeth drilled in to by ex-Nazi Laurence Olivier who keeps repeating at you "is it safe?". This is one of my favourite movie lines of all time next to Boogie Nights, "my fucking wife has an ass in her cock on the driveway. I'm sorry if my thoughts are not on the photography of the film we're shooting tomorrow". There's something about the is it safe line that's so damn memorable. Poor Hoffman just being like what the fuck is this guy talking about. Is what fucking safe. Still this ex Nazi keeps coming at him with the drill and asking is it safe?

This scene is way heavier than anything you saw in The Ipcress File. Whatever torture you've seen in a spy movie is nothing compared to this one. It's even heavier than Dicaprio getting his finger nails torn off in Body of Lies. You will never forget this scene and once it's over you won't stop repeating "is it safe?".

Without giving too much away when they drive poor Hoffman round the block and drop him back off gives my head such a whirl you know. Then you get to see him bailing round the streets of New York at like 4am in his pyjama bottoms being chased by thugs awakens such visceral and nightmarish fears in me. Not seen anything so giddie that got my heart racing since I first saw Arnie Schwarzenegger sprinting after Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese in The Terminator. Trust me, it'll get the blood pumping.

Marathon man's second half is going to put you so on the edge. It's pretty much an hour long chase sequence. So many horrible scenes in this movie are going to blow your head off. At the time it was criticised as being too violent but now if anything that's its greatest strength, keeps it from looking old because it still seems so frightening.

This goes out to all you Safdie brother heads out there, you will love this movie. Not even just cause it belongs to the corner of pure anxiety inducing cinema but because it could fit in to the same world as Uncut Gems with all the Jews and high priced diamonds. There's one scene in this that freaks me out on a level I don't even understand and I'm not even Jewish. Nazi Szell makes a trip down to the diamond shops and quickly realises people still recognise him from the Holocaust. One survivor even follows him down the street trying to get someone to stop him screaming "stop that man" but no one will listen and thinks she's crazy. The setup of it is like some kind of night terror where you can't quite get your body to function properly and not a single person will help you. Definitely the kind of movie you'd love to hear more from Pauline Kael about. Believe she described the film as a "Jewish fantasy".

Laurence Olivier was so convincing and intimidating as this Nazi teeth driller that they gave him an academy award nomination for this little stunt. It's so unfitting to his reputation and what you normally expect to see him doing. Let that be a lesson to you theatre loving nerds who swerved off great careers to do some bloody Shakespeare nonsense like Ed Norton, we don't want to see you on stage reciting monologues written hundreds of years ago, we want to see you on the screen drilling holes in people's teeth. It's that simple. So stop hiding in your little fucking theatres getting wanked off by your inclusive little club, climb out your own arses and make something for the people. You may think you're doing something worthy and great but you're not. Drill teeth now.

Bonus Points for:

-Roy Scheider for taking a wire to the neck on a Parisian balcony

-Laurence Olivier's torture methods and teeth drilling

-Dustin Hoffman running at full sprint round New York at 5am to outrun some goons

-Laurence Olivier's sleeve blade

-Laurence Olivier being forced to swallow diamonds

Overall Score: 5/5