It has its points of interest, but any 60’s Bond flick is a better choice
When an ad executive in Manhattan (Gary Cooper) is mistaken for a government agent by a foreign spy & his cronies (James Mason, et al.) he finds himself a fugitive traveling by train to Chicago wherein he meets a woman that seems to have his favor (Eva Marie Saint). After a curious encounter with a crop dusting plane everything culminates at Mount Rushmore, South Dakota.
"North by Northwest" (1959) is an adventure/thriller by Hitchcock with a huge reputation. It obviously influenced the James Bond flicks of the 60s, which started three years later with “Dr. No” (1962), but it’s very toned down by comparison because the hero in this case is not a trained spy. It’s entertaining to a point, but also seriously overrated due to some glaring problems…
Jessie Royce Landis plays the protagonist’s mother when she was only a little over 7 years older than Cooper and it’s too obvious; the story drags too much at this point (when he’s hanging out with his mother); his chance meeting with a key character on the train (Saint) is too coincidental; their make-out sessions are premature, unconvincing and painfully dull; what happens to the plane is stupefying; the crop dusting encounter supposedly takes place in rural Indiana when it’s clear that it’s nowhere within a thousand miles of Indiana (actually it was shot at the southern end of Central Valley, California, outside of Bakersfield); speaking of which, the geography is too noticeably disingenuous: e.g. during the drunk driving episode there are no cliffs like that on Long Island (it was actually shot at Potrero Valley, Thousand Oaks, CA, and obviously so).
Still, there’s enough good here to enjoy if you favor Hitchcock & the cast and don’t mind quaint movies.
The film runs 2 hours, 15 minutes (unnecessarily overlong).
GRADE: B-/C+