The Boys from Brazil (1973)

The 1970s were the golden age of the political thriller. Between Vietnam and Watergate, American audiences were disillusioned, and flocked to films that exposed sprawling conspiracies and featured down-and-out protagonists. The Boys from Brazil is a somewhat different beast from films like The Parallax View, and Marathon Man, in that it is far more upbeat and tongue-in-cheek than it is gray and drab. Based on the novel by Ira "Rosemary's Baby" Levin, The Boys from Brazil follows the adventures of Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman, who is alerted to a conspiracy orchestrated by no other than the Angel of Death himself, Dr. Joseph Mengele, to revive the Third Reich. Mengele, is of course, hiding out in Paraguay, the go-to destination for fleeing Axis war criminals. Boasting more bombast than you can handle on the parts of Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier, and the eternal James Mason, critics have not been kind to this one over the years, but I personally loved this. Yes, it is ridiculous, cheesy, improbable, over-the-top, ham-in-fist, but it is also a very smart and engaging thriller, and for all its silliness, the last twenty minutes packs a punch, and is an enlightening and uplifting look at human morality. The message at the heart of this film is that human beings are in control of their own destiny, despite efforts from various powerful actors to sway us otherwise, no one can condition us to act a certain way. We hear a lot of talk lately from so-callled "experts" about how genetics will determine our position and actions in life, and from "concerned" parents about how this or that "made" their child act out and shoot up his/her classmates. The Boys from Brazil demolishes this bullshit, and is a ballad to the individual as the master of their own decisions. At the end of this film, Liberman, a holocaust survivor who bore and witnessed the worst of the worst of Nazi tyranny, makes they key decision to destroy the list detailing the locations of all of Hitler's clones from a paramilitary unit that wishes to kill them all, because they are just kids. Even though they were born from Hitler's DNA, these children are not Adolf Hitler, they are just kids, and will forge their own path. For what is ultimately a studio-produced production, this is a brave message.