Review, Discussion of North by Northwest

The great spy world was enhanced by the movie North by Northwest by Alfred Hitchcock. The way that this movie transformed modern spy movies changed not only the shape of further movies but also the way characters were played. North by Northwest was released in 1959 and starred Cary Grant as Mr. Thornhill, Eva Marie Saint as Eve and James Mason as the evil villain Phillip Vandamm. This movie threw most reality to the wind as Hitchcock takes us into his world of entertainment. The interesting scenes that are supposed to correspond with real-life events are soon caught up in movie land. The main purpose of this movie was to show identity theft in its earliest years; modern-day America today sees this as a commonplace. In the 1950s and '60sm, there was little thought about locking your doors at night, much less identity theft. I think that many people's eyes were opened or perhaps their minds were opened at the idea of being mistaken for someone else.

The major conflict in the film centers on our main character Robert Thornhill, who is mistaken to be George Kaplan. This all starts when Thornhill goes to visit some business colleagues in a restaurant before he is shuffled into a car and kidnapped, after which is taken outside and forced to drive drunk. These men would plague his every footstep trying to murder Thornhill at every chance they can get. The other conflict in the story derives upon the fictitious man Kaplan created by the government to safeguard an undercover agent. The underlying conflict that the government has is whether the agent is more important than this innocent man who the killers are convinced is the true Kaplan. The amount of time that it took to make Kaplan appear as real as possible looms over these government official's heads as they contemplate pulling Thornhill out of the situation that he has been dragged into. Through a miracle Thornhill starts to develop his own means of surviving in a world where he is a wanted man. With the help of his admirer Eve, Thornhill is able to avoid death and capture.

The villain in this movie has got to be Phillip Vandamm and his henchmen. What makes Vandamm so scary is that he really acts like a normal person that you would meet on the street. Aside from his rich tastes the man has power that rarely is seen truthfully. Using means of deception Vandamm can act like anyone's friend until he backstabs them to further his power. The climax of the film reaches its uproar when Phillip finds out that his lovebird Eve really is a double agent working for the government. So instead of just killing Eve right away he was going to wait until they were flying, then he would drop her from the air. This all was very exciting because at the same time Thornhill was using all the spy-like skills that he had learned throughout the movie.

This film really was excellent in regards to storyline and the actual acting involved. Due to the ever-changing nature of the film it kept the viewer more worried about what would happen next instead of modern graphics. In the 21^st Century any 'good' movie seems to have a multi-million dollar budget that included special effects at every scene. This movie was good because it did not need real life like scenes to make the story feel interesting. The only thing that I would change would have to be the minor details throughout the story to make it more believable. I feel that people relate with a believable story more realistically than they do a spy-like movie where nothing that happens could ever happen to them. The movies that catch the public's eye that carry low budgets with the most success often times relate to real life stories.