YMMV / Marathon Man

• Adaptation Displacement: Audiences are more aware of the movie than the book it is based on.
• Awesome Moments: The entire third act. After being jerked around and tortured the whole movie, Babe wipes out Szell's men including Janeway. Spoils Szell's escape, humiliating the man and ultimately causing Szell to kill himself accidentally.
• Catharsis Factor: After everything the bastard did, Christian Szell's death at the hands of his own blade WILL make you cheer. Even better is that it happens because a man he tortured utterly destroys his ego before throwing the diamonds he tortured the man for into a reservoir, leaving Szell with nothing as he dies.
• Complete Monster: Christian Szell, known as the White Angel because of his hair, was a Nazi dentist working at Auschwitz, and used to falsely promise protection to the Jewish prisoners in exchange for their gold hidden in their teeth, before sending them to the gas chambers. After escaping World War II, Szell proves to be amoral and selfish enough to sell out most of his Nazi comrades to a shadow government agency in exchange for protection and assistance in his diamond smuggling—the ones he stole from the Jews. When Szell goes to New York to claim a box of diamonds, he becomes increasingly paranoid for his safety, ordering the couriers working for him killed and having Thomas "Babe" Levy and his girlfriend beaten and robbed, and then killing Babe's brother Henry "Doc" Levy, one of his collaborators, believing him to be a traitor. Szell then kidnaps Babe and, wanting to know "(i)s it safe," cruelly tortures him with his dental instruments, first digging a hole in his cavity and then drilling a healthy tooth "until (he) reach(es) the pulp", all the while maintaining a friendly attitude. After Szell is convinced Babe doesn't know anything, he orders the latter to be killed anyway, later using a retractable knife to slash the throat of a Holocaust survivor who recognizes him.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: The ending is at best bittersweet, but it's even worse when you consider that, with Doc, Janeway, and Szell all dead, that shady government agency they all answered to will likely be doing an investigation, and Babe still knows far too much.
• Ho Yay: Henry and Janeway. (It's more explicit in the novel.)
• Memetic Mutation: Is it safe?
• Moral Event Horizon: If Szell hadn't already crossed it, he definitely does when he slits the throat of a Holocaust survivor in the middle of the streets.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The torture sequence. It takes every fear people have of going to the dentist and amps it up to Eleven on the nightmare dial. During the screening, the director noticed many people leave during the drill scene... and tentatively come back.
  • The scene where Babe's apartment is being broken into. He locks the bathroom door but can do almost nothing as it is slowly, inevitably broken down...
  • Also, the fact that you survived the horrors of the Holocaust and the concentration camps, and yet 3 decades later you get your throat slit by one of its most infamous war criminals in the middle of the street in New York.
• Retroactive Recognition: Michael Vale, who had a small role as one of the jewelers that Szell asks for an estimate of diamond prices, became well-known to TV viewers in the 1970s and 80s as the baker in Dunkin Donuts commercials.
• Signature Scene: Szell torturing Levy with a dentist drill while repeating his mantra, "Is it safe?"
• Values Dissonance: Babe's wooing of Elsa involves stealing her book, tracking her down to her address, following her to her doorstep, ignoring her repeated efforts to get him to go away, and not leaving her alone until she submits to seeing him again. This is played as cute, but in modern times, it would be seen as creepy stalker behavior.

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