I have a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives and several baaahtenders dependent upon me.

Rating: 10/10 (30 December 2004)

Cary Grant's Roger Thornhill is caught up in a most-absurd set of mistakes and blunders that a super-spy like Phillip Vandamm ever made! Roger is kidnapped, forced into drunk-driving and left for dead by the cell of profit-oriented commie-sympathizers headed by James Mason's Vandamm. This gets our hero good and mad, and he's determined to get to the bottom of things. When he gets chased into a cornfield by a machine-gunning crop-duster pilot, it provides us with one of the greatest SPFX of the 1950's! Wouldn't THAT tick you off, if it happened to you?? Roger eventually learns that not only are the bad guys pulling strings on him, but his own government is manipulating him as well, he wants out! Roger doesn't intend on disappointing his string of dependents by "getting myself SLIGHTLY killed." But, beauty gets this Madison Avenue advertising exec back into the spy game when the glorious Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) becomes vulnerable to "detection and elimination" as the CIA puts it. Like Gilda, Eve is a very immoral girl who's sacrificed her honor for a comfy life as Vandamm's mistress...in reality, she's a good girl who fights for truth, justice and the American way. The principals end up almost defacing a famous monument (somewhere near Rapid City) toward the end of this flick. Hitch's funny-bone is working well, as the very-drunk Cary tries to save his life while careening down a twisty mountain rode in a convertible...it's actually a very scary scene as Cary narrowly escapes injury and death several times, but it's also hilarious. The morning after, in police court, Roger's lawyer states publicly that he knows his client to be a reasonable and logical man, only to be publicly contradicted by Roger's cynical mother. Like Arabesque, it's all very unlikely, but still tremendous fun.