SPOILER ALERT, please do not read this unless you've seen the movie. Let me assure all you Hitchcock lovers that I also love Hitchcock. Some of my favorite thrillers are Psycho, Rear Window, and Family Plot. I realize you have to "suspend your disbelief" to a certain extent. But I found most of the story in North by Northwest absolutely unbelievable. Spoilers follow. I don't understand why the bad guys jumped to the conclusion that Cary Grant was the spy they were after, a spy they'd never even seen. I don't understand why Cary Grant didn't just start yelling and screaming as they abducted him in front of a big crowd of people. I don't understand why the bad guys decided to kill him, not by merely shooting him, but by bothering to force booze down his throat and putting him behind the wheel of a car, or how he was able to drive at all (rather than passing out). I don't understand why the police didn't find out whose house it was (the U.N. diplomat) and then wonder why anyone was there. I don't understand how the blonde knew which train Cary Grant would take, how she knew who he was (so she could pay someone to have him seated at her table in the club car), and why she helped him at all. I don't understand how a large crowd could witness a diplomat being stabbed by someone throwing a knife, then conclude that Cary Grant did it, or why Cary Grant (the ultimate stupidity) would pull the knife out of the diplomat's back and hold it up for everyone to see. Or why, once he was a hunted man, he did absolutely nothing to alter his physical appearance. I don't understand (skipping forward a bit to shorten my review) why the blonde sent Cary Grant to what should've been his certain death, and why, when he survived and saw her again, it didn't even bother him. I don't understand why the bad guys used such an absurdly contrived means of attempting to kill him again, having a crop duster fly at him, instead of (again) just shooting him. I don't understand why the crop duster pilot couldn't avoid flying his plane into a truck. I don't understand why the bad guys were hanging out in an open house that anyone could get into. And I don't understand how Cary Grant and the blonde (or anyone else) could possibly cling to the monuments with nothing but their bare hands and not fall to their deaths. So, with apologies to everyone who ate this up and loved it, I couldn't believe or understand any of these things.
Review of North by Northwest
