By nearly any standard of measurement, The Boys from Brazil is a massive disappointment. The plot, which involves the hunt for Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck), the famed ‘Angel of Death’ who performed absolutely horrific human experiments during his tenure at Auschwitz, could have veered into being a rather serious thriller with strong political overtones (in the style of Munich or Z) or into a hilariously campy masterpiece (you’ll see what I mean in a minute) along the lines of Surf Nazis Must Die. Unfortunately, the film is neither, taking instead a middle ground with no identity of its own. As a result, the film not only loses its credibility; it also becomes really boring.
Laurence Olivier (yes, that Laurence Olivier) portrays Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman who, acting on a tip from a lone hunter in Paraguay (a very young Steve Guttenberg), begins investigating a plot that is beginning to take shape amongst the escaped Nazi fugitives. That plot, which is revealed after waiting for far too long, involves creating numerous clones of Adolf Hitler (the project began nearly fifteen years before the film’s start, so there are 95 young Hitlers hidden throughout the world that are all in their teenaged years here). The idea, apparently, is to try once again to take over the world using all of these Hitlers, although this plot doesn’t really make sense, even by Nazi standards.
Even if they succeed in creating exact duplicates of Hitler, how could they ever hope to take over the world with just 95 people? Are they forgetting the circumstances in Germany that led to his being able to take power in the first place? Once people found out about all of the Hitlers, wouldn’t they just kill them? Ugh, never mind.
But therein lies the problem: this is a film for which it is entirely appropriate to refer to Hitler in the plural form, but still expects to be taken seriously. The tone of this film tries desperately to approximate that of other famous 70s thrillers (on more than one occasion, the film is strongly reminiscent of Marathon Man), but it is never taut enough to do enough anything but force unfavorable comparisons upon itself. It also features a main character being eaten by dogs in one scene which, surprisingly enough, comes as welcome relief in a film that thus far has completely wasted a potentially brilliant visual centerpiece.
If you were writing a script, what would you do with 95 teenaged Hitlers? Have them form their own basketball league? Rig student council elections? Try their best to get on with their lives in seclusion? Something else entirely? It is guaranteed to be better than what Franklin J. Schaffner (whose prior credits include Planet of the Apes and Patton) decided to do, which was absolutely nothing. It’s possible that centering the movie around teenaged Hitler wasn’t what he had in mind, but this isn’t really the sort of thing that a director can just push to the side and expect to get away with. The presence of all those Hitlers hangs over this movie like a death shroud and constantly reminds you of the movie’s vast, unmined comedic potential which obscures whatever point the film is trying to make.
That point, for the most part, is never entirely clear. There seems to be something about free will going on at the end (could a cloned biological Hitler ever be good?), but it’s hard to say how such a point could ever be applied to most people’s everyday lives.
The Boys from Brazil is partially redeemed by the lead performances with both Olivier and Peck striving valiantly against the soft flow of mediocrity that defines the film’s glacial pace; each turns in a commanding, if not entirely convincing, character. However, even they are not enough to save a film with so little sense of direction and so much wasted potential.
"The Boys From Brazil" is on sale April 7, 2009 and is rated R. Thriller. Directed by Franklin J Schaffner. Written by Heywould Gould. Starring Gregory Peck, James Mason, Laurence Olivier, Rosemary Harris, Steve Guttenberg, Uta Hagen.
