Movie · 1978 · Drama, Mystery, Science Fiction · 2h 5m · R · English
Curator score: 3.1/10 (52.2K ratings)
If they survive… will we?
Overview
Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman discovers a sinister and bizarre plot, masterminded by Dr. Josef Mengele, to rekindle the Third Reich.
Ratings
Curator score: 3.1/10
IMDb: 7.0/10
Letterboxd: 3.38/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 72%
Metacritic: 40
TMDB: 6.7/10
Director
Franklin J. Schaffner
Production
The Producer Circle Co., ITC Entertainment
Cast
Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier, James Mason, Lilli Palmer, Uta Hagen, Steve Guttenberg, Denholm Elliott, Rosemary Harris, John Dehner, John Rubinstein, Anne Meara, Jeremy Black, Bruno Ganz, Walter Gotell, David Hurst, Wolfgang Preiss, Michael Gough, Joachim Hansen, Sky du Mont, Carl Duering
Where to watch
Amazon Prime Video, fuboTV, TCM, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Curator Review
Verdict
A pulpy, high-concept Nazi-hunter thriller with a terrific cast and an enjoyably paranoid premise, but its tonal stiffness and occasionally absurd plotting keep it from fully landing. It’s most rewarding if you like serious actors committing hard to a wildly implausible setup.
Best for
viewers who enjoy 1970s conspiracy thrillers
fans of prestige cast-versus-camp tension
audiences interested in postwar Nazi-hunter stories
people who like slow-burn suspense with a bizarre premise
Skip if
you need airtight logic and realism
you dislike older, stately pacing
you want a straightforward action thriller
you’re put off by campy villainy in otherwise serious material
Overview
The Boys from Brazil is one of those movies where the premise alone does half the work: Nazi hunters, Josef Mengele, and a plan to recreate Hitler. It sounds outrageous because it is, but the film mostly plays it with grim, old-school seriousness, which gives the absurdity a strange charge instead of deflating it entirely.
Worth noting
What keeps it watchable is the cast. Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier, and James Mason bring real authority to material that could easily collapse into nonsense. The movie’s pleasures are less about surprise than accumulation: a sense of dread, a trail of clues, and the uneasy feeling that the conspiracy might actually be too big to dismiss.
Bottom line
It doesn’t quite become the great thriller it wants to be, partly because the pacing is heavy and the concept is inherently ludicrous. But as a piece of 1970s paranoid entertainment, it has a durable, off-kilter appeal. If you’re in the mood for something intelligent, grim, and a little ridiculous, it’s worth the trip.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Jacob Knight (3.5★) · 335 likes
Masterpiece Theater Presents: Would You Kill Baby Hitler?
theriverjordan (3.5★) · 255 likes
“The Boys From Brazil” gets the old thespian gang together for one last Nazi hunt.
By the time you realize just how ridiculous the conceit of “Brazil” truly is… the film’s legendary leads have already sold you on an all-expense paid trip to Cuckoosville. Which - I assume - is somewhere in South America.
“Brazil” stars Laurence Olivier as a retired Nazi hunter, who agrees to take on a final target in the post-war absconded criminal Dr. Josef Mengele, played… more
Kenneth Clark (3.5★) · 189 likes
What are the odds that Mengele himself watched this movie (which came out a few years before his death) and thought to himself, “damn why didn’t I think of that?”
William Cooper (2.5★) · 172 likes
"Who would believe such a ridiculous story?" My thoughts exactly. That line is said by Laurence Olivier half way through this movie but completely summed up my thoughts on it. I'll watch anything on WW2 and those evil basterd NAZIS but this is a bridge too far. I just wanted to see NAZIS hunted down and killed, not some crazy story about cloning Hitler 94 times and recreating his exact environmental upbringing in them. The whole plot played like a farce to me. Not even the stellar cast could save this for me.
Rafael "Mister Movie" Jovine (3.5★) · 158 likes
In this adaptation of Ira Levein's novel, a fantastic cast joins forces to stop the sinister Josef Mengele, who has taken refuge in Brazil, from carrying out a diabolical new experiment.
Heywood Gould's writing does a good job of keeping you engaged and invested throughout the story's intricacies. Director Franklin J. Schaffner strikes a nice balance between the film's tension and thriller components and Gregory Peck's campy performance as the infamous Dr. Mengele, who is both intimidating and mildly entertaining… more
1980 · Drama, Thriller, Comedy · 1h 58m · R · Curator 1.5/10 (10.2K ratings) · Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, Night Flight Plus, Midnight Pulp, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
For viewers who like serious, slightly unhinged genre material that keeps slipping between thriller, allegory, and oddball drama.
Topics
1970s thriller, paranoid suspense, historical drama, science fiction concept, war aftermath, conspiracy, bioethics, campy seriousness, political villainy, slow burn