Law & Order (TV Series) Marathon (1999) User Reviews

Your superiors were all over you. You were failing.

[Mrpalli77 · 9/10 · 14 April 2018]

A married girl was shot dead at close range by a hispanic guy who ran away with a 800 dollar mountain bike after an attempted purse snatching. Police didn't manage to find the shooter but they found the bike, owned by a guy who live in the housing Project. Unfortunately, the guy (Guillermo Diaz) was too fast for Lennie, but Green is fluent in spanish and the suspect was located at the airport terminal where the detectives arrested him. But Briscoe and Green had to work hard inside hispanic community to find enough evidences to lock him up. Lennie heard the suspect's confession during a street basketball game, but he was the only one, so he need a double shift together with Green to find the murder weapon. Did the old detective manage to get over all odds?

Police investigation took the greater part of this episode, lawyers took only the back seat. Lennie confronted his partner several times and he seemed to be the one under investigation. Anyway uncle Lennie, you will always be the best.

She just got in the way

[bkoganbing · 7/10 · 12 August 2019]

The normally unflappable Lennie Briscoe gets good and rattled in this episode where he and his partner arrest Guillermo Diaz for a pair of murders. The first is another drug dealer and the second some poor woman who just got in his path after he was fleeing the first.

Jerry Orbach is usually pretty good under pressure, but this one gets to him. Diaz whispers a confession to him that only he hears. Even Jesse Martin is out of earshot. The brazeness just makes Orbach lose his cool.

Diaz is great in a chilling portrayal of evil. Also good is Lauren Velez as Diaz's attorney.

This episode belongs to Jerry Orbach for a different kind of Lennie Briscoe.

Guillermo Diaz Rules

[naphiah · 10/10 · 11 July 2019]

I fell in love with Mr Diaz' acting in an episode of Girls and have been super pleased to find him in some L&O episodes, he's transcendent. I am not so much one for plot, I will attend here to the marvelous acting by all concerned and the pleasure also to see Adam Rodriguez in an early role. The fellow playing Flaco is sensational and appears not to be acting but living Flaco's life before us.

Guillermo Diaz is able to make us despise and love someone at the same time and isn't that the essence of the human condition?

Igualmente Mr Jerry Orbach aka Lenny Briscoe. All of the things I've read in the other reviews are true and still, the whole show hangs together for me in this reflective way, the bad has good, the good has bad and at the end when Briscoe says he will do the job from his wheelchair, I can only wish for it.

Marathon of intensity

[TheLittleSongbird · 10/10 · 21 October 2021]

Actually started watching 'Law and Order' from the later episodes of the Briscoe and Green period. Seeing the whole Briscoe and Green period overtime, it came to me that some of the earlier episodes were among the best from it. The previous episodes were mostly of an incredibly high standard and most of the season's episodes in general ranged between very good and fantastic, with "Killerz" and "Justice" being exceptional and "Merger" being the only disappointment.

"Marathon", which has indeed more emphasis on the policing while the prosecution stuff takes a backseat, is another one of the fantastic episodes of Season 10. On paper it sounds fairly ordinary and familiar, so not much extraordinary, but the execution is actually a lot more intricate than one would think and the episode is made even more special by the truly great performances and character interaction. As well as Briscoe's character writing in a case where he is a lot less composed than usual, though in this case one cannot blame him.

The production values as ever have slickness and grit, with an intimacy without being claustrophobic. The music has presence when it's used but does so without being intrusive, some of it is quite haunting too. The direction is also understated but the tension never slips.

Furthermore the script is another truly fine one, with "Marathon" being one of the season's best written episodes. It is very intelligently crafted and has intensity and edge while handling the topic sensitively too. The story is never too obvious and never too convoluted either, always complex and clever and not near as ordinary as it initially sounds.

Briscoe is very easy to root for in a tough situation, one is not sure how things will map out because it doesn't look good for him. Very like Season 7's "Corruption", another episode that sees Briscoe losing his cool in dire circumstances. Love his chemistry with Green, here with more tension than what was seen before with their chemistry when Briscoe's behaviour causes tension. Jerry Orbach does hard-boiled and vulnerable so well, while Jesse L. Martin is very well settled and also has the right amount of authority and edge. Guillermo Diaz is unnerving in his role.

In conclusion, fantastic. 10/10.

Blue Line Fractures.

[rmax304823 · 5/10 · 23 September 2012]

The show must have hired new writers or Dick Wolfe decided some sort of change in the formula would pep up the show in its tenth season. The alternative is that age is turning my brain into tofu.

The plot is anfractuous and it's burdened with an unpleasant confrontation between Lenny Brisco and everybody else in the department, including his partner, Green.

I don't think it holds together very well. Something about a "gang" of purse snatchers pops up early in the game and then is dropped without further mention. It's not just dismissed. It's not another of the familiar and endearing red herrings. It's just never mentioned again, as if the writers had forgotten about it.

But that's a minor example. The whole plot is hard to follow. I don't mean any single scene. Each scene is understandable on its own terms. But the links between scenes, though they may make perfect sense on paper, are weak on the screen.

And Brisco's anger -- he was the only guy to hear the murderer blurt out a confession -- isn't characteristic of the character. In earlier years, Brisco had been there before and so had his partners, and they'd handled doubt and suspicion with resentment that was understated, if not exactly with aplomb. Ray Curtis actually had to contradict Brisco on the stand at least once. Here, the absence of corroboration leads Lenny to slam the suspect around in interrogation and turn snotty towards his colleagues, which generates a lot of alienation.

It ends on a note of ambiguity, not resolution. It's all a little unpleasant although it has the expected virtues of local color and well-drawn ancillary figures. Isn't S. Epatha Merkeson the embodiment of irony and nurturance? I'd rather talk to Lieutenant Van Buren than a shrink.

It didn't need to be a "Marathon."

[CrimeDrama1 · 1/10 · 16 September 2022]

As much as I like Lennie Briscoe's character, this episode had a lot of forced conflict. There was so much made about Briscoe hearing a confession from the prime suspect (Sabo) but it happened so fast and no one else heard it, so there are going to be corroboration issues. What bothers me is why did Sabo say the victim got what she deserved? There was never any evidence she knew him. When Sabo confirms his confession to McCoy at the end, there is a lot of hostility in his voice. It just doesn't make any sense. What did the victim ever do to him? Not enough time was spent on explaining the motive. I don't like calling murders like this, "a robbery gone wrong." Sabo made it sound personal. He killed her just because she wouldn't let go of her purse? Think about expectations. Why would you expect a woman to instantly let go of her purse, which she has held tight every day for decades? The title of the episode is goofy. It was only a 'marathon' because of the writers creating forced conflict every chance they got. Briscoe and Green knew who the killer was but getting enough evidence was the problem. I miss Joe Friday's approach to police work, "Just the facts, ma'am." These writers could have learned from the classics.

That ending ruined the whole episode.

[m-47826 · 1/10 · 22 January 2024]

What did I say earlier? Depending which backgrounds people are from, you see the whole judiciary system on a different light. Had the murderer been a rich white kid shooting people, you'd have the whole police precinct on his/her back and the lawyers and judges pushing for the maximum sentence. Guillermo Diaz's character was trash, and deserved to be flushed out into a garbage bin. Even his lawyer regretted taking his defense at the end, and I was baffled McCoy didn't set the trap of false deal on him, to make him confess and get the conviction he wanted in the first place. Are we lead to believe that poor woman was nothing more than collateral damage?... It's a good Briscoe « centric » episode, but the writers biases spoiled it again.