Graduate student and marathon runner Babe Levy (Dustin Hoffman) finds himself thrown into a dangerous new world when Doc (Roy Scheider), his secret agent brother, is killed by the Nazi war criminal Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier). Szell has come to the US in search of a cache of diamonds stolen from Jewish concentration camp victims, and after he fails to get what he wants from Doc, he turns to Babe, convinced that the student must know the whereabouts of the jewels. In fact, Babe knows nothing about stolen diamonds, secret agents or villainous ex-Nazis - but he must learn fast if he's going to stay alive. Includes the infamous sequence where Szell uses his dentistry skills to painfully extract information from the open-mouthed Babe.