North by Northwest

North by Northwest (1959)

Runtime: 136 minutes

Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock

Starring: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Leo G. Carroll, Martin Landau

From: MGM

Due to my Amazon Instant free trial expiring on Friday, I figured I should watch and review this long movie tonight while I still can use that service. My apologies for this being posted Thursday morning instead of Wednesday night; things happen.

This is one of the most famous and best rated movies that Hitch ever did, both with movie fans and with critics. Yes, critics are also fans of movies, but you know what I mean. There are several legendary and iconic moments, from the cropdusting plane in the field chasing Cary Grant to the Mt. Rushmore stuff, the ending... and that one scene in the cafeteria that led to a famous movie mistake where in the scene they put in the movie you can see a young boy plug his ears before someone suddenly fires a gun as he knows from previous takes the gunshot would be loud... OK, that last part may only be famous to me, but I find it to be memorable.

The short version of the plot from IMDb: “A hapless New York advertising executive is mistaken for a government agent by a group of foreign spies, and is pursued across the country while he looks for a way to survive.” Of course it's more complicated than that.

Things start off great right away with the awesome opening credits, from Saul Bass. It starts off real fast and there's rarely a dull moment as due to circumstances Roger Thornhill (Grant) is believed to be a secret agent working for the government and there are evil forces set out to get rid of him as they believe him as a secret agent would expose their nefarious plans. From New York you go to Chicago, a field in the middle of nowhere Indiana, then to Mt. Rushmore.

This is not the first time I've seen the movie and I've always thought that a few times, there are some “wait a minute here...” moments with the plot. That aside, I am able to excuse that when the story is so exciting, there is acres of great snappy dialogue, the cinematography and score are great and work well separately and together, and you have awesome performances, especially from Cary Grant, who is a man amongst men. Stuff like that and how this is a long movie (which doesn't seem like over 2 hours when you watch it) helps make up for any logical fallacies. Yep, this is great.

I'll be back Friday afternoon.