Typical Hitchcock, but in top form.

Rating: 7/10 (12 May 2010)

SABOTEUR looks like a prototype of Alfred Hitchcock's later film NORTH BY NORTHWEST (it's also similar to his earlier classic THE 39 STEPS). Everything from the man framed for a crime he didn't commit, the lovely young woman who helps him out, and the climactic final confrontation in some famous landmark. Substitute Cary Grant's Roger Thornhill to Robert Cummings' Barry Kane, Eva Marie Saint's Eve Kendall to Priscilla Lane's Pat Martin and the finale take place atop the Statue of Liberty instead of Mt. Rushmore and you have SABOTEUR.
Still, although it isn't the best movie the Master of Suspense has created, it's nonetheless watchable and rather entertaining. The pace moves rather fast early on where factory worker Barry Kane (Cummings) is framed for setting the factory on fire. Kane knows who really did it and hopes to clear his name. As usual, he narrowly escapes the law and several occasions in hopes that he find the real saboteur before he strikes again. But since this is way before Hitchcock's bigger budget productions, SABOTEUR is a little tamer than his later works. The cast is OK at best, with Cummings coming of as a decent man-on-the-run but a rather wooden actor. Lane's performance fares a little better, but she's not the best of the later perennial blond heroines. Only Otto Kruger's and Norman Lloyd's suitable intriguing antagonists that remain the best.
The pace slows down midway (involving a scene inside a train with a bunch of circus freaks feels a bit out of place in a Hitchcock movie), but picks up later on, especially before the climax atop the Statue of Liberty (which, sad to say, is rather anti-climatic). Overall, not one of Hitchcock's best movies and far outdone by later attempts at the "man-on-the-run" formula, but a must-see for Hitchcock's fans.
Rating: ***1/2 out of 5.