Boys from Brazil [Blu-ray]

Overview

This film of Ira Levin's novel The Boys from Brazil wastes no time in establishing the fact that several seemingly unrelated men have been mysteriously murdered. Elderly Jewish Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier), brought into the case when the clues seem to point to a neo-fascist plot, traces the trail of evidence to Paraguay. Here he finds an unregenerate Auschwitz doctor, patterned on Joseph Mengele and played by -- of all people -- Gregory Peck. Lieberman discovers that the murdered men had all fathered sons who were identical -- the results of a cloning experiment, designed to create a race of incipient Hitlers.

Product Details

Release Date:	06/23/2008
UPC:	5037115291332
Original Release:	1978
Source:	Ais
Region Code:	2
Language:	English
Time:	2:07:00

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Gregory Peck	Dr. Josef Mengele
Laurence Olivier	Ezra Lieberman
James Mason	Eduard Seibert
Lilli Palmer	Esther Lieberman
Uta Hagen	Frieda Maloney
Rosemary Harris	Mrs. Doring
John Dehner	Henry Wheelock
John Rubinstein	David Bennett
Anne Meara	Mrs. Curry
Steve Guttenberg	Barry Kohler
Denholm Elliott	Sidney Beynon
Jeremy Black	Jack Curry/Simon Harrington/ Erich Doring/Bobby Wh
David Hurst	Strasser
Bruno Ganz	Prof. Bruckner
Walter Gotell	Mundt
Carl Duering	Traustiner
Linda Hayden	Nancy
Richard Marner	Doring
Georg Marischka	Gunther
Michael Gough	Harrington
Wolfgang Preiss	Lofquist
Joachim Hansen	Fassler
Guy Dumont	Hessen
Gunter Meisner	Franbach
Prunella Scales	Mrs. Harrington
Raul Faustino Saldanha	Ismael
Jurgen Andersen	Kleist
Gerti Gordon	Berthe
Mervin Nelson	Stroop,Stroop
Wolf Kahler	Schwimmer
Monica Gearson	Gertrud
David Brandon	Schmidt
Jerry Goldsmith	Composer

Technical Credits

Heywood Gould

Robert Fryer	Executive Producer,Producer
Stanley O'Toole	Producer
Martin Richards	Producer
Franklin J. Schaffner	Director
Heywood Gould	Screenwriter
Derek Ball	Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

The Boys from Brazil is a solid, tense, and thoroughly respectable thriller. The cast is excellent all around, with distinguished leads Gregory Peck and Laurence Olivier turning in performances that live up to their reputations. The time-honored structure of the arch-nemesis duel works well here, and, perhaps due to the age of the principals, the movie focuses on suspense and mystery rather than merely action. Boys was directed by the late, great Franklin J. Schaffner, whose mere 13 features included several milestones of American cinema, including Planet of the Apes, Patton, and Papillon. Though The Boys From Brazil is not quite up to the level of those classics, it certainly succeeds in keeping the viewer's attention. Based on Ira Levin's novel, the story is intriguing and unique, to say the least. Its theme of cloning has more resonance with every passing day than it ever did at the time of the film's release, and may lend a permanent sense of topicality to the film. Moreover, the film's ultimate message -- human beings are more than just "nature or nurture" -- is a pleasantly humanist one, affirming the need for free will as we head into an increasingly uncertain future. Olivier, editor Robert Swink, and composer Jerry Goldsmith all earned Oscar nominations for their work.