Marathon Man is a 1976 American suspense thriller film directed by John Schlesinger, adapted by William Goldman from his 1974 novel of the same title. It stars Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, Roy Scheider, William Devane and Marthe Keller. The film is about "Babe" Levy (Hoffman), a Columbia University graduate student and distance runner who becomes unwittingly embroiled through his brother in a plot by Nazi war criminal Christian Szell (Olivier) to retrieve ill-gotten diamonds from a safe deposit box owned by Szell's dead brother. The film was released by Paramount Pictures on October 8, 1976, and was both a critical and commercial success.