North by Dumb West

Rating: 2/10 (23 June 2011)

Hitch made worse films than Saboteur, but never one more annoying. As the master once joked about another of his lesser films, "we must never let plausibility rear it's ugly head." The basic set up seems hard to swallow...would NOBODY else at the plant notice the real bad guy?
I think Robert Cummings would have been acceptable in the role but he simply has to play a lot of second or third rate material. Other performances are more questionable, the studio sets are very obvious; but the real problem is that the film's constant stabs at wit (sorry Miss Parker) consistently play as pure Corn.
The film seems both a bad rehash of things Hitch had done better and an unsure preview of stuff he would do better. Often a Hitchcock film is compelling in the moment the uneasy levity ends and the story becomes deadly serious. The wan humor here gives the film no place to go.
Finally, there seems to be a repeated them that the virtuous will also be able to identify each other and therefore win out in the end. Such a corny notion would have no place in the great films of Hitchcock, and that's part of what makes him an artist.