United Kingdom, United States · 1978
Rated R · 2h 5m
Director Franklin J. Schaffner
Starring Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier, James Mason, Lilli Palmer
Genre Drama, Mystery, Science Fiction
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A young Nazi hunter in Paraguay stumbles into a secret SS meeting led by Josef Mengele, an infamous Nazi doctor who conducted experiments on prisoners in Auschwitz. After contacting experienced Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman, the two Nazi hunters work together as they uncover a sinister and bizarre conspiracy to rekindle the Third Reich.
The film is sunk by a series of preposterous performances. There are more phony German accents than in a prep school version of Colditz, and Levin's expert plotting is buried beneath an avalanche of lines like 'Vat are we goink to do?'.
Franklin J. Shaffner's deadpan adaptation of Ira Levin's silly story about Hitler clones. The plot is less suspenseful than the overacting contest between the two leads, Laurence Olivier and Gregory Peck, who spend most of their screen time one-upping each other in affectations.
Jerry Goldmsith’s ominous score is reminiscent of his Oscar-winning work for The Omen but The Boys From Brazil is pure pomp and circumstance.
For much of its slowburn build there is a classy, intelligent thriller at work, something closer in tone to The Odessa File. Still, you must remain guarded to how over the top and quasi-horror events will finally turn.
Yet in the end the self-conscious importance of the film produces a rather queasy feeling, for really this story is no more than a crude exploitation — decked out with our latest scientific finery — of what amounts to a penny dreadful fantasy. If you stop and think about it, even if there were a nest of Nazis hiding out in South America, most of them would be pushing 80 by now, and quite incapable of the exertions required by this farflung, not to mention farfetched plot.
A city man has more to learn than he thinks from the townspeople where his dying relative lives.