Marathon Man - 1976 - Dustin Hoffman - Question about the diamonds?

I was wondering if there was some side effect to swallowing diamonds I was unaware of, like it destroys you intestines or something.

The more I think about it, the swallowing thing was probably just poetic justice because many of those diamonds were probably swallowed by the Jews he helped kill at some point.

This is a prime example of a movie leaving out a key portion of the book.

He made him eat the diamonds because the diamonds were the motivation for so much death and pain.

The diamonds were taken from the holocaust Jews ... and the diamonds were behind the death of his brother.

So he wanted the diamonds to be the instrument of destruction of the Mengele character ... to use them for good when they had been the genesis of so much evil.

Well played sir.