Movie Review: ****North by Northwest

     

This is a classic Alfred Hitchcock suspense spy movie.  It has everything that a good movie needs.  It has mistaken identity, murder and a pretty girl, who just happens to be on the wrong side, but on the right side pretending to be on the wrong side.  Cary Grant stars as Roger Thornhill and is mistaken for a fake person set up by the CIA to draw out a group of spies.  It draws them out, as the kidnap our star.  They attempt to kill him, by filling him with alcohol and sending him down a steep hill in a car.  He gets picked up for drunk driving, but survives.  He then confronts the spy at the U.N., but the person is not the actual person but was using his home only.  However the U.N. ambassador is killed by a thrown knife, and our Thornhill is blamed, and on the run.  He gets on a train headed for Chicago, while still being chased by the police.  However there is a girl who saves him, Eve Kendall played by Eva Marie Saint.  However she is with the bad guys and sets him up to be murdered.  There is a classic scene of his dodging a crop dusting airplane.  He is then recruited by the CIA as they explain everything.  Turns out the girl is their secret inside agent, and Thornhill decides he has to save her.  He is then off to Mt. Rushmore to stage his own death, or the death of the pretend spy set up by the CIA.  It almost works, but one of the spies realizes it was a fake death.  This show ends with a chase scene on the face of Mt. Rushmore.  Fun stuff.