AboveDeepBuggy Some things I liked some I did not.

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Roy Hart If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Benedito Dias Rodrigues Strangely this movie till now is so low rated by IMDb's users,perhaps the whole plot has some holes of course,but to me since the first time amazed me entirely,the story is such fictional but works very well,intriguing and mystery around the Nazi old formula of synthetic fuel,interesting idea to start,but actually the movie stand in two strong columns Scott and Brando in the final scene both are in clash what's they think about the perfect world for everybody,Marthe Keller is another highlights,and a dozen of famous actors whose ennobling the picture!!Resume:First watch: 1987 / How many: 4 / Source: TV-Cable TV-DVD / Rating: 8

paul vincent zecchino By all means, see this film if you wish to understand the moronic, disingenuous, commie-rat mindset which infested the 1970s.'The film the oil companies don't want you so see'??? Yeah. Right. What would they care? Which oil companies? Time and President Reagan proved the premise of this film to be false, a self-serving propaganda piece perhaps crafted to make Jimmy Carter, look good and win a second term. This would likely have resulted in us speaking Russian, those fortunate enough to survive, wouldn't it?The oil companies along with the American people in 1980 were enduring The Carter Glory Years, when both moslem radical and soviet thugs held America hostage, with the apparent approval of the commander in chief. One of the ways in which these intergenerational, symbiotically relatedhead lice held us for ransom was by means of 'oil embargoes'. OPEC constantly engineered 'oil shortages' throughout the 70s, starting in the fall of '73.The Carter Glory Years featured inane 'Big Bad Oil' fairy tales, invented by leftists and repeated by the uninformed. One tale was that oil companies were sitting on trillions of gallons of oil, awaiting a mysterious price hike. Another was the fatuous muth about 'the guy up in Maine who invented a seventy - the number steadily rose from seventy to one hundred to two hundred and beyond - mile per gallon carburetor but Big Bad Oil Companies and Evil Detroit stole his patent and destroyed his plans.That's the false premise of this film, which explains why it's patently stupid, boring, and false. If we'd only stop and THINK about that which we hear, eh? Ask yourself, what oil company and/or car maker could get away with it? Answer: none. Ask yourself, what oil company and/or car maker wouldn't love to be the first to market a new car line with a two-hundred mile per gallon carburetor? Every one would love to do so, wouldn't they?This fairy tale's silliness was compounded by the fact that by the 1980s, computer controlled carburetors were being supplanted by fuel injection. That said, a gallon of gas can push a given weight only so far and no more, no matter what some 'guy up in Maine' claims to have invented.With Hollywood, if you want to know the truth, turn the lies in its movies 180 degrees around and you'll have it.Interestingly, within a couple years of The Formula's release, President Reagan got government out of the oil business, and gas became plentiful and cheap. This permanently angered The Left as well as sore loser Mr. Peanuts, but facts are facts.Would you expect any different from Hollywood? Why? Didn't both Lenin and Stalin say, 'give me Hollywood and I'll control the world'? You think they just sat back went to sleep after saying that?Marta Keller is beautiful to behold and George C. Scott is as always, a barely contained hi-voltage dynamo of psychic energy.Boring? It's no different from British horror films in which the monster never shows up for curtain call but instead you listen - for two hours running time - to professorial British gents discussing the beast as they sip Port in the walnut panelled drawing room of a country estate located a discrete distance to the west of London.Paul Vincent ZecchinoMassive Critic at Critial MassManasoviet Key, Florida26 January, 2012

mike dewey This film may have even more relevance today than in 1980, when it was released. Most in this country would love to be left to their own devices by marketing/consuming fuel based on American coal derivatives like those delineated in the "Genesis" formula instead of depending upon foreign petroleum. The parallels outlined here are close to today's, especially the popular theories these days that big oil is suppressing valid fuel alternative projects that would undercut their energy dominance, hence, their financial status.Unlke some other reviewers, I thought the film moved along at a nicely orchestrated pace, making it, perhaps, a more analytical movie than a Hollywood flash-and-dash melodrama. The film follows a logical progression of events that lets the viewer absorb the contents in easy to swallow doses, that is, as long as he/she pays attention to the plot development.I was impressed by mostly all the actors, especially Marthe Keller, who acquitted herself very well in her portrayal by staying well within her character and by her impeccable timing and fluid delivery. Mr. Brando's rather short stint in the film was punctuated by terse, cynical and penetrating dialog, playing the enterprising villain who continually cuts to the chase with large doses of street-wise metaphors. George C., as usual, is a no-nonsense good cop who only wants to see justice prevail, regardless of who gets burnt. Yet inside him, demons from the past lurk and can't help but surface from time to time: you can see it in the non-verbal communication that Mr. Scott so characteristically exudes.Thanks to TCM for showing these kinds of films that are usually omitted on other movie channels.

Ralph Caught this while doing some work at my desk and saw it had George C Scott, a favorite of mine. It had a really bad feel to it on a made for TV movie level, so I kept it in the background so I could get some snippets as this looked really really boring and it's all that was on at the time. Anyway if your political bents swing towards the Greenpeace crowd than you will rate this a 7 to 10, since I'm on the other end of the political spectrum it gets a 2. I love secret Nazi formula thriller stuff, and one that holds as much promise as the "formula" here did along with Scott should have come much better. That said the movies only redeeming qualities was it's similarities of Brando's character to Dick Chaney, and the speech in the end when Scott says "Your the reason why old people have to eat out of garbage cans!". That and a weird scene with strippers on stage in Germany with swastika pasties on, that was kind of interesting, you had to be there. I think both of these actors pulled some stunts during the academy awards and they were the forerunners of todays mostly leftist Hollywood actor crowd, and this movie has a clear political bent to appeal to that audience with dialog like the old people and trash cans. I'm surprised he didn't mention anything about soup lines, but I might have just missed it as this movie was hard to stay focused on and for once I preferred to do some work than follow this boring drivel. 2 of 10 stars, Scott didn't make all that many truly great movies in his career, but I certainly remember the ones he did do, this one wont be remembered as one though.