Enormously entertaining

Rating: Null/10 (17 July 2002)

This may not be Hitch's greatest film, and it's shallow compared with, say, VERTIGO, REAR WINDOW or PSYCHO, but it is still terrifically entertaining.
Continuing with a number of the ideas he used in THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS, but with a full-on Hollywood budget, this film was very influential on all the secret agent films of the sixties; from James Bond (many of the James Bond novels had been published when this film was written) via Flint and Modesty Blaise and the Man from UNCLE, right up to today's Austin Powers epics - films so dumb they don't realise they're spoofing a spoof.
The world of the late fifties is conveyed in all its wacky optimism - all those clean, flat pastel surfaces - and hope for the future. You can tell that these people - cold war or no cold war - just know that tody is better than yesterday was, and that tomorrow will be even better.

Lastly; the film restoration and DVD transfer are exemplary - pin-sharp with great colour, free from telecine and digital artefacts and enhanced with excellent extra features. In only all DVDs were so well done...