Marthe Keller

On November 12, 1975, Dahlia Iyad (Marthe Keller) arrives at the airport in Beirut, Lebanon. Taking a taxi into town, she walks through narrow alleys and bazaars, then slips into the back seat of a waiting car. The vehicle takes her to a gated compound, where she meets Nageeb (Victor Campos), a Palestinian co-conspirator. He shows her a secret film of an American prisoner of war named Mike Lander (Bruce Dern) confessing his war crimes to his North Vietnamese captors. Nageeb admonishes Dahlia that she's built an upcoming mission around Lander who is obviously unstable, but Dahlia insists she can control him. Dahlia tells Nageeb to destroy the film because it could compromise her mission. Confident that her plan will succeed, Dahlia records an audio statement on behalf of her guerrilla group, Black September, telling the American people that it's time for them to pay for aiding Israel's repression of the Palestinians. That night, Israeli commando Major David Kabakov (Robert Shaw) leads a strike team against the compound. When Kalakov enters Nageeb's room and kills him, he finds Dahlia taking a shower in the adjoining bathroom; however, he assumes she's Nageeb's mistress or a local prostitute and doesn't shoot her. Kabakov's men gather evidence, including Dahlia's tape recorder, and escape the compound before blowing it up. On November 14, Mike Lander is piloting a Goodyear blimp above a football game at the Coliseum in Los Angeles, California. The head of the television crew is angry because Lander can't get the blimp and its overhead camera in the right spot. But Lander brushes him off, knowing that no other pilot would even try to fly a dirigible in the high winds that day. On November 17, in Washington, D.C., F.B.I. agent Sam Corley (Fritz Weaver) is called to the Israeli embassy to hear Dahlia's tape. Kabakov tells Corley that Dahlia's wording indicates that Dahlia's message was not a warning but rather a justification to be heard after a planned terrorist attack. He suspects the attack is planned for January. Kabakov recognizes Dahlia as the woman he saw in the shower, but he has no idea who she is. Meanwhile, Dahlia goes to Lander's apartment in Los Angeles. Lander is an emotional wreck because Dahlia hasn't contacted him in three days and he thinks she's betrayed him. Dahlia calms him with a gift-a statuette of the Madonna made of an explosive compound that he needs for his project. Dahlia encourages Lander to pull himself together and go to his Veteran's Administration rehabilitation meeting, so that he won't lose his piloting job with Goodyear. Later that day, at the V.A., Lander reveals his bitterness. Despite his heroism and years as a P.O.W. in Vietnam, the Navy turned his wife against him and took away his commission. On the night of November 23, Lander and Dahlia unload wooden crates from a freighter in the Long Beach harbor when a Coast Guard cutter approaches. Since Lander's speedboat is faster and smaller, he's able to evade them by running under a low bridge, but the Coast Guard reports the clandestine activity to the F.B.I. The freighter captain tells Corley that he knows nothing about the incident, but when Kabakov and fellow Israeli agent Robert Moshevsky (Steven Keats) sneak aboard the ship that night and threaten to slit the captain's throat, he confesses that his crew delivered 12 crates to a man and a woman in masks. Just then, the phone rings, and when the captain answers it, the receiver explodes, killing the captain and injuring Kabakov. When Dahlia sees Kabakov on television being carried into the emergency room of a local hospital, she disguises herself as a Catholic nurse, breaks into the hospital drug room and fills a syringe with potassium chloride. However, Moshevsky spots her before she can get into Kabakov's room and demands that she accompany him downstairs to the nurses' station for identification. On the elevator Dahlia jabs the needle into his neck and kills him. As soon as Kabakov gets out of the hospital, he goes to the office of Muzi (Michael V. Gazzo), the local importer in charge of Lander and Dahlia's shipment. Holding Muzi at gunpoint, Kabakov learns that the shipment was plastic explosives, the woman called herself "Kaza" and the man who paid him was an Egyptian in Tripoli named Mamud al Bernardi. On December 3 , Lander and Dahlia land a small plane at a desolate Mojave Desert airstrip to test an explosive device he's designed for the mission. Lander gains the confidence of the airstrip's sole caretaker and kills him by firing off hundreds of "steel rifle darts"-pieces of shrapnel-in one symmetrical blast. Ecstatic with his success, Lander tells Dahlia that 200,000 darts could cause significant damage if they were detonated 100 feet above the fifty-yard line of a football game from the Goodyear blimp. Back in Washington, D.C., Kabakov has a secret rendezvous near the Lincoln Memorial with an old intelligence rival, Egyptian Colonel Riaf (Walter Gotel), and convinces him that it's in both of their interests that he find out who Kaza is. When the men meet again days later, Riaf has a photograph of Kaza and reveals that her real name is Dahlia Iyad. Riaf explains that Dahlia was born in Haifa (then Palestine) to an Arab father and German mother, and Israeli commandos killed the men of her family and forced her mother, sister and Dahlia into refugee camps, where only Dahlia survived. A few days later, Dahlia hauls a speedboat-shaped trailer into Miami, Florida, and parks it in a locked storage area. When she checks into the downtown Hotel Edward, Palestinian agent Mohammed Fasil (Bekim Fehmiu) greets her with news that the Israelis have found out who she is. Although Fasil wants her to abort the mission and go into hiding, she refuses, insisting it's already too far along. On January 1, 1976, Corley and Kabakov are alerted that Dahlia has been spotted in Miami, but by the time they arrive, she has already driven back to Los Angeles and only Fasil is at the hotel. Before F.B.I. agents can apprehend Fasil, he shoots his way out and wages a running gun battle through the city until Kabakov kills him on the beach. When Kabakov and Corley search Fasil's hotel room, the commando holds up a magazine with the Miami Orange Bowl on the cover. The two hurry to the Orange Bowl and try to convince stadium authorities that they need to cancel the upcoming Super Bowl X football game to be held on January 18, but the authorities refuse and claim that the President has arranged to be at the event. Although security is enhanced and all flights over Miami during the Super Bowl are canceled, police helicopters and the Goodyear blimp are allowed to fly overhead. On January 17, the day before the game, Lander's mission is stymied when Goodyear replaces him with another pilot named Farley (Tom McFadden). Assuring Lander that he needn't worry, Dahlia goes to Farley's hotel room, kills him and puts a "Do Not Disturb" sign on his door. The next morning on January 18, Lander joins his crew and tells them that Farley is sick. At the airfield, the men prepare the blimp, lift off and head for the stadium. During the game, Lander starts a fire in one of the engines, which provides him with an excuse to hurry the blimp back to the field and fix it. Dahlia is waiting there with the trailer and helps to hook up Lander's contraption to the underbelly of the blimp's gondola, claiming it's a last-minute request from CBS-TV. However, one of the television crewmen becomes suspicious and runs back to the CBS remote trailer. Lander follows the man and shoots him. Meanwhile, the police find Farley's body at the hotel and alert the authorities that the blimp is the terrorists' weapon. Lander and Dahlia use automatic weapons to kill the men on the blimp airfield, including several policemen and an F.B.I. man, then head back toward the stadium, dumping the gondola's equipment to offset the added weight of the shrapnel. Kabakov and Corley commandeer a police helicopter and follow them, using the gondola's limited visibility beneath the blimp to avoid detection. Lander pilots the blimp with the bomb towards the Orange Bowl stadium while Dahlia provides covering fire as she opens fire and shoots down a police helicopter, and forces unarmed civilian media helicopters to back away. Dahlia opens fire on the helicopter containing Kabakov and Corley when it comes into view, slightly wounding Corley when he tries shooting at the blimp with a rifle. As Kabakov and Corley swoop down next to the gondola for another pass, Kabakov opens fire with his sub-machine gun, killing Dahlia and wounding Lander, but it's too late to stop the blimp. Using the helicopter's cargo hook line, Kabakov slides down onto one of the blimp's rear tails and connects it to the helicopter in time to pull the dirigible away from inside the stadium and toward the nearby ocean. In his final moments, Lander lights a backup fuse to detonate the bomb. Moments after the helicopter lifts Kabakov free from the blimp, Lander's invention explodes in a ball of fire, spraying the ocean surface with shrapnel. With 80,000 lives saved, the helicopter flies back toward Miami.

In the opening scene, Bobby Deerfield (Al Pacino), a Formula 1 race driver, stands on a race track looking at skid marks and searching for clues to a recent crash. Seeing his friend, Bertrand Modave (Steve Gadler), standing next to his Formula 1 car, Bobby repeatedly asks for a key. This is all revealed to be a dream when Bobby suddenly wakes up with a start. He turns on the bed lamp, goes to the bathroom, then returns to bed and lies awake in the dark, reliving that day at the track. Fans ask for autographs and chant the name Deerfield. His French girlfriend, Lydia (Anny Duperey), stands nearby. Bobby gets into his car and takes off with several others. One of the cars hits another and explodes. After Bobby and Lydia attend Modave's funeral, Bobby tells his pit crew that he will not get into another Formula 1 car until they figure out what happened to Modave's, because their cars are exactly the same. Later, in Paris, France, Bobby connects with his brother, Leonard (Walter McGinn), but the brothers have little to talk about. Bobby does not remember anything from their early home life in Newark, New Jersey, not even the way his Mae West impersonation always made his mother laugh. Bobby's attitude angers Leonard, who has legal papers that concern their mother's property, along with a packet of boyhood photographs. Bobby is not interested in the property, and Leonard asks if he wants to be contacted when their mother dies, then knocks Bobby's sunglasses off his face. Later, with Lydia, Bobby speculates that rabbits on the tracks may have caused the crash. He drives to a sanatorium in the alpine village of Leukerbad, Switzerland, where the surviving driver, Karl Holtzmann (Stephan Meldegg), recuperates. Staying after dinner, Bobby asks Karl about the crash, but Karl insists that Modave simply misjudged the turn. Bobby disagrees. After Karl is wheeled away, a patient named Lillian Morelli (Marthe Keller) asks Bobby if she can have his butter, and asks disjointed personal questions. The conversation turns to speed, danger and death, but when Bobby says he never thinks about those things, she concludes that racing is boring. After dinner, as they watch a magic show with other patients, Lillian wants to know if Bobby believes in magic, destiny, or God. That night, a nurse comes into Lillian's room with medications, but Lillian refuses and says that she will come to death on her own terms. Early the next morning, as Bobby prepares to leave, Lillian appears with a bag, wanting to hitch a ride to Florence, Italy. Bobby agrees to let her ride along, but Lillian continues to pick at him about his "feminine touch" on the steering wheel and speculates about his racing car being an extension of his penis. When they go through a tunnel, she tries to get Bobby to scream in the dark with her, because she wants to scream and why shouldn't he? As she screams, Lillian breaks down in tears. They stop for the night at a hotel in Bellagio, Italy. Bobby calls his mechanic in Paris, asking him to pull the steering linkages from his car and Modave's, and also to have the film of the accident ready when he gets back. At dinner, Lillian calls Bobby a "turtle" because he takes no personal risks despite his dangerous profession. She asks Bobby to hold her, and they return to her room, disrobe and get into bed, where she promptly dozes off. When Bobby strokes Lillian's hair, some of it comes out in his fingers. Next morning, as they prepare to leave, Lillian wants him to follow a hot air balloon floating in the distance above Lake Como, but Bobby refuses. Later that day, as Bobby drops Lillian off at her uncle's house in Florence, she runs inside to get a book for him. She tells him she is sorry that he didn't scream with her or chase the balloon, but she hopes he finds his rabbits. Later, Bobby finds a note in the book that Lillian has written in Italian, which translates as "Everything is sweeter when you take a chance." Back in Paris, Lydia asks Bobby about his trip and mentions that she ran into a friend who told her he had seen Bobby in Bellagio. At the garage, Bobby reviews footage of the crash. The projectionist slows down the film, then freezes a frame, but Bobby sees nothing that might provide an answer. In preparation for the upcoming 2 May 1976 Jarama, Spain, race, Bobby films a television commercial in Paris. He feels restless, however, and returns to Florence to talk with Lillian's Uncle Luigi, in hope of finding her. Luigi says that Bobby should forget about Lillian because she is too outspoken and difficult, like her mother, but if Bobby wants to see her, he should come play Bocce because Lillian always comes to watch. She does show up as Bobby and Luigi finish a game, and asks if Bobby is still "driving in circles." As Bobby and Lillian walk together, she asks him to remove his sunglasses because she hates to see herself in mirrors. He claims to wear them to avoid being recognized, but she bets a wine and cheese picnic that nobody will know him. He takes them off, and as they walk along a block with nobody noticing, Lillian smiles with satisfaction, then shouts "Bobby Deerfield!" A crowd gathers around him. Later, Bobby and Lillian picnic and she criticizes him for never having fun. As she walks away from Bobby, she comes upon the owner of the property, Carlos Del Montanaro, who tells her he'll be flying his balloon tomorrow. Rejoining Bobby, Lillian tells him a wild story about her father's death, but then says she made it up. Bobby insists she is keeping emotional distance, but Lillian says that telling a lie is better than making small talk. After they return to her apartment, Bobby and Lillian kiss and then make love. In the morning, Lillian is gone, but she has left a marked newspaper clipping about a balloon regatta in the countryside. Bobby arrives as a half-dozen large balloons are ready to lift off. Lillian is with Carlos and a couple of others. When she asks Bobby to join them, he refuses and the balloon drifts away without him. Bobby and Lydia go to Jarama, but he is distracted and Lydia notices that something is wrong. During the race, as Bobby takes the lead, he fails to make a turn and crashes. He escapes uninjured, but flames destroy his car. Back in Paris, Lydia admits to Bobby that she knows all about Lillian Morelli, and that Lillian is dying. Realizing that Bobby was unaware of Lillian's terminal condition, Lydia regrets telling him. Bobby returns to Florence. He and Lillian argue. She wants him to surprise her and stop being boring, so Bobby imitates Mae West, even though Lillian has no idea who Mae West is. She says, "It's a beginning." Bobby shows her the childhood photos his brother gave him. She asks why there are no photos of his mother. During a boat outing, Bobby tells Lillian a story about his mother's death that intrigues her, but then confesses that he made it up. Lillian laughs and appreciates the lie. As their relationship blossoms, Bobby senses doom hanging over them, especially after Lillian passes out in a shop. One day Lillian tells him she wants to go back to the sanatorium. On the way, a couple of American tourists take their picture and promise to send it to Bobby. However, he gives them his old address in Newark. He stays with Lillian in Leukerbad as she fades away. After her death, Bobby drives back to Paris.

Thomas "Babe" Levy (Dustin Hoffman) is a history Ph.D. candidate and avid marathon runner researching the same field as his father, who committed suicide after being investigated in the Communist witch hunts of the Joseph McCarthy era. Babe's brother, Henry James Levy (Roy Scheider), known only as "Doc", poses as an oil company executive but in fact is a U.S. government agent working for a secret agency headed up by Director Peter Janeway (William Devane). Babe is not aware of his brother's true occupation. Doc is often supposedly out of the country on business for extended periods of time, but comes to New York under the guise of a visit to Babe. The brother of a Nazi war criminal possesses a safety deposit box key, but is killed in a traffic accident (after a road rage altercation with a short tempered middle-aged Jewish American motorist). Doc suspects that the criminal, Dr. Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier) will be arriving to retrieve an extremely valuable diamond collection. Szell later sends a burly assassin named Chen (James Wing Woo) to kill Doc in his Paris hotel room, but Doc fights the hit man and breaks his back. Babe enters into a relationship with a young woman named Elsa Opel (Marthe Keller), who claims to be from Switzerland. One night while out on a date Elsa and Babe are mugged in a park by two men dressed in suits. Some time later, Doc takes the couple to lunch, where he tricks Elsa into revealing that she has been lying to Babe about her background. Though Doc suspects she may have some connection to Szell, he tells Babe only that she is seeking an American husband so that she can become a U.S. citizen. After Szell arrives in America, Doc meets him to tell the former Nazi he is not welcome in the country, and also to warn Szell to stay away from Babe. Szell casually accepts the pronouncement, but then swiftly knifes Doc, wounding him severely. Doc is able to make it back to his brother's apartment, but collapses and dies in Babe's arms without telling him anything. The police interrogate Babe for hours, until government agents led by Peter Janeway arrive. Janeway asks Babe what Doc told him before he died, and informs Babe of his brother's career as a U.S. government agent. Babe insists that his brother did not tell him anything, but Janeway feels that Doc struggled all the way to Babe's apartment to give him vital information of some kind. Babe is later abducted from his apartment by Szell's henchmen, Karl and Erhardt (the two men from the park). In an infamous sequence, Babe is tortured by Szell, a skilled dentist, who repeatedly asks "Is it safe?" Confused by the question code phrase he does not understand, Babe denies any knowledge, but is tortured. The dentist offers him oil of cloves, an anesthetic, as positive inducement to cooperate. Eventually, Babe loses consciousness and Szell pauses his torture. Babe is then rescued by Janeway, who apparently kills Szell's bodyguards and takes Babe from Szell's hideout. As he drives, Janeway explains that Szell is in America to sell off his large cache of diamonds, which he had taken from Jews he had exterminated at Auschwitz during World War II. Janeway continually presses Babe about Doc's dying words, but Babe again insists he knows nothing. Frustrated, Janeway reveals himself as a double agent working with the Nazi criminal all along, and he turns Babe over to Karl and Erhardt (Janeway had only faked killing them). As it turns out, Szell is one of Janeway's highest level informants, and had informed on other Nazi war criminals in return for immunity. Delivered back into Szell's hands, the Nazi criminal has a curiously kindly conversation with Babe before calmly explaining why he is holding Babe for questioning. Szell suspected that Doc would attempt to rob him of his diamonds, or rat on him to authorities; thus his desire to know if it's "safe" to withdraw the diamonds, i.e., whether Doc told Babe any incriminating information. Still unable to extract anything from Babe, he proceeds to drill into one of Babe's healthy teeth. Babe eventually escapes again, this time on his own, with Janeway and Szell's two henchmen giving chase in a car. Though exhausted and barefoot, he is able to outrun his pursuers in part by remembering famous "marathon man" Abebe Bikila, who ran barefoot. After inviting a neighborhood acquaintance and his toughs to break into his apartment and steal his pistol (the same pistol his father used to commit suicide), Babe phones Elsa, who agrees to meet him with a car. She drives him to a country home as a hideout. Babe guesses that she has set him up; she confesses that Szell's dead brother owned the home, and that she was one of Szell's couriers. Janeway and Szell's men arrive, but Babe avoids an ambush by taking Elsa hostage. In another twist, Janeway kills Szell's men and offers to let Babe kill Szell in revenge for Doc's death if Janeway can have the diamonds. Babe agrees, but as he leaves to find Szell, Janeway attempts to shoot Babe, but kills Elsa instead when she tries to alert Babe. Angered, Babe guns down Janeway. Back in New York, Szell attempts to determine the value of his diamonds. However, he chooses an appraiser in the Diamond District in midtown Manhattan, where many of the shop owners are Jewish. A shop assistant who is also an Auschwitz survivor believes he has recognized Szell as a wanted Nazi criminal. After Szell hurriedly leaves the shop, an elderly Jewish woman also recognizes him, but passersby think she is senile. Trying to cross the street to get closer to Szell in order to expose him she is hit by a taxicab, causing a crowd to assemble to assist her. Amidst the confusion, the shop assistant appears again, directly confronting Szell. Becoming increasingly paranoid, Szell slits the man's throat with a retractable blade concealed in his sleeve. Szell retrieves his diamonds from the bank, but is taken hostage by Babe as he attempts to leave, who inconspicuously forces him into Central Park and into one of the pump rooms at the south end of the Reservoir. Babe holds Szell at gunpoint on a scaffold and seizes the diamonds; rather than kill Szell, Babe informs him that he will allow Szell to live and keep as many diamonds as he can swallow. Szell initially refuses, prompting Babe to begin throwing the diamonds into the water below them. Szell relents and swallows one diamond, but then refuses to cooperate further. Szell goes on to insult Babe, and after he spits in Babe's face, a fight erupts in which Szell tries to stab Babe. Babe throws the remainder of the diamonds down the scaffold steps towards the water; Szell dives for them, but stumbles, and fatally falls on his own knife blade. Picking up his gun, Babe exits the pump room and heads out into Central Park. Stopping by the Reservoir, he throws the gun into the water.