'The Boys From Brazil'
A retrospective movie review by Walter Frith
The most intriguing thing about 'The Boys From Brazil' is that it keeps you guessing how the plot will unfold. It begins in South America and a secret meeting is taking place. A meeting held by Dr. Josef Mengele, otherwise known as the "Angel of Death" and a former Nazi enforcer under the command of Hitler himself during World War II.
The movie implies that he is still alive and he is played chillingly by Gregory Peck. Peck's interpretation of the role is a monologue of hatred for those who oppose his ideas and arrogant superiority over those he wishes to control. It is a blinding and insane personality trait which Peck plays very convincingly.
The meeting he is holding is with different men, some former officers of the SS, young generation assassins and other evil conspirators. A large number of men are to be assassinated across the globe over a period of time in order for Mengele's plan to work. What the men at the meeting don't realize is that their meeting is under surveillance by a young man (Steve Guttenberg in one of his first roles) who intends to convey the recordings of the meeting to a Nazi hunter (Laurence Olivier in an Oscar nominated role) in the hopes of stopping Mengele and bringing him to justice.
After receiving a strange phone call from Guttenberg, Olivier finds in the next little while that evidence begins to mount to support the claims that the plot the SS intends to carry out is in fact becoming a reality. This leads Olivier on a world wide trip to find the truth. He finds a number of boys living in various parts of the world that all look exactly alike and he discovers the Mengele has created clones of someone.
In wake of the cloning of Dolly the sheep in Scotland in the past year, you might want to take a look at 'The Boys From Brazil' to see how this movie, which was dismissed as science fiction when it first came out in 1978, has proven to be somewhat of a prophesy and although bans on human cloning have been called for around the world, who knows? It may have already happened.
Laurence Olivier is superb in his role and the film is directed by Franklin J. Schaffner (Oscar winner for 'Patton' - 1970) and is based on the novel by Ira Levin. It doesn't try to be anything more than a low key detective story with moments of heightened tension that show evil at its most vindictive. You will definitely be against cloning once you've seen 'The Boys From Brazil'.
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