Rating of
4/4
"That wasn't very sporting, using real bullets."
Arbogast1960 - wrote on 03/29/08
I never cease to be jealous of Cary Grant. He is everything any man could ever want to be: rich, handsome, suave, urbane, beautiful women tripping over themselves to be with him. Alas, it is not to be. Grant is better than perfect in his final effort for Hitchcock (perhaps the best incarnation of Hitchcock's wrong man), as is Mason as the villainous but relentlessly beguiling Vandamm (perhaps the best incarnation of Hitchcock's charming villain). Saint is duly lovely and mysterious, and Landau is terribly creepy in his brief turn as Vandamm's sidekick Leonard, resembling some sort of unholy union between John Cassavetes and a falcon. It's truly astonishing that Hitchcock and screenwriter Ernest Lehman were able to fashion such a marvelous, coherent screenplay out of a desire to film a few nifty set pieces; this is probably the wittiest of Hitchcock's films. It may have helped that the entire plot is one big MacGuffin--but few films whose plots are secondary show such care that the plot not descend into idiocy. As for the set pieces, they put films like National Treasure to shame. There is, of course, the chase on Mt. Rushmore, which is both exciting and endearingly tongue in cheek. Even better is brilliant attempted assassination in broad daylight, a genius inversion of the gloved hand wielding a gun in a dark alley. And to top it all off, there is the not so vaguely coital ending--who doesn't love a good train ride?
