Reich 'n' Roll

What happens when you take three ageing, but undeniably great, actors, add them to a plot that is essentially b-movie nonsense, and then throw in a bit of Nazi chic just for good measure? Well you’d probably end up with a film like Franklin J. Schaffner’s Boys from Brazil.

The film follows Ezra Leiberman (played by Laurence Olivier), an elderly Jewish Nazi hunter who is living out his autumn years in Vienna. When he is contacted by a young disciple with information of a Nazi plot, he is set back on the case and pitted head to head with Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck) who is orchestrating a curiously precise murder plot from his lair is South America. Pulling Mengele’s proverbial strings is a former Nazi Colonel, a character who is of no importance really; apart from the fact he is played by James Mason, which makes him brilliant. The story jumps from one madcap plotline to another, until finally exploding with the mother of all ridiculous twists. I won’t spoil it for people who haven’t heard it, but it’s fucking hilariously good.

The quality of the actors obviously pushes this up from being a nazi-ploitation film until it reaches the bracket of genuine political thriller. Olivier gives a tasteful and restrained performance of the idealistic Leiberman, a haunted concentration camp survivor (ironically it was Olivier playing the Nazi two years earlier in Marathon Man). By contrast Peck appears to relishing playing the bad guy and chews up scenery with an intensity that is truly quite frightening. Finally James Mason finds playing a Nazi a breeze, as it is a perfect role for his trademark brand of callus charm.

One thing you’ve got to love about the 1970’s is that a film like this just wouldn’t get made in this day and age, or if it did it certainly wouldn’t be played straight. Everything about this film should be ridiculous, it shouldn’t work, but it does. It’s like someone’s taken a novel by Dan Brown and turned it into a good film, a miracle. I mean it even had enough of a budget to be shot in various locations around the world, have pretty good affects for the time (including some quality gore at the end) and still pay its leading actors.

Boys from Brazil is testament to one slightly disappointing truism, they literally don’t make em like they used to. Watch this film, you’ll thank me later.