Who sabotaged this lackluster nap-fest?

Rating: 1/10 (12 February 2007)

Rarely will anyone deny that Hitchcock remains one of the most creative, inventive and prolific directors of all time, because he is arguably all of these things. It takes true genius to scare generations of film goers out of taking showers and wearing neck ties. Saboteur, however, is not creative or prolific at all. Rather, Hitchcock set out with the soul intention of creating a film to muster "American Pride," a certain call-to-arms, support-our-troops title which was a popular theme of the time. With that in mind, Hitchcock severely underplayed other important aspects of the film, including but not limited to a logical plot, characterization, believable dialog, and a fluent, running storyline.
Typically Hitchcock does great with espionage films, only a few years earlier achieving cinematic greatness with The Foreign Corespondant and The 39 Steps, but seemingly lost his stride in creating Saboteur and merely recycled the same once-thrilling story lines both his previous excursions readily provided. Without going into any great depth here is a list of a few of this films major problems:
1. Despite having his face plastered on every newspaper across America, the only person who recognizes Kane is blind.
2. At the dinner party, Kane and Patricia don't want to run for the door because the bad guys might grab them and tell the party they were "gate crashers." Logically, what prevents the spies from grabbing them and saying this at any point during the evening? Besides, does anyone need to be reminded Kane is a wanted terrorist?
3. Since when can a fan belt cut through handcuffs?
4. Nobody recognizes him...his face is on EVERY NEWSPAPER!!!
5. The spies catch up with Kane in the ghost town and assume he's the man Freeman sent to work with them...shouldn't't he have some sort of credentials? I know spies don't run around with name tags and photo IDs but a secret handshake maybe?
6. Cop picks up Kane escaping from Freeman's house, still seems no one recognizes this guy.
7. How exactly does the FBI come to believe Kane with no evidence? They don't even show Kane talking to the FBI, the scene simply fades in and we are forced to assume everything is now kosher.
8. When the cops search the Carnival Caravan how do they know Kane is now with a woman? The blind man believed Kane's story thus logically would not have reported his daughter missing, kidnapped, or even more importantly running with Kane. Why does this movie not employ logic?
This is a running list. The movie is not exciting, the plot makes no sense, and the world is full of people who willingly take wanted terrorists into their homes and cars everyday because its no big thing. Hitchcock fails miserably on this one.