Plot summary (with spoilers): Roger Thornhill is a snappy ad exec with two ex-wives and a cavalier devil-may-care twinkle in his eye. (Think Roger Sterling). He rides a cab over to a restaurant for an important meeting with some clients, then remembers that he needs to send his secretary a telegram. At the same time, some shady men enter the restaurant and ask the waiter to page a "Mr. George Kaplan". The waiter does so, just as Roger raises his hand to call the waiter over. He asks the waiter to send the telegram, which is something that happened in 1959 I guess, and the shady men think he's responding to the page. Thornhill gets up to follow the waiter to the...let's say Telegram Room, and the shady men block his path and then stick a gun in his ribs and order him outside. They pull him into a car, call him "George Kaplan" repeatedly, and all the while Roger seems mildly annoyed but not nearly as scared as he should be. He makes several cracks about asking to be kidnapped another time when he's not so busy. They take him to the house of Lester Townsend. Townsend interrogates him about being a CIA spy, and Roger says he's not a spy, but they don't believe him and finally force him at gunpoint to drink an entire bottle of bourbon and after he passes out, they put him in the front seat of a car and start it so that it's about to drive off a cliff. But Roger suddenly wakes up and drunkenly turns the car around and starts down the road, swerving wildly. Heh. The bad guys follow him, but Roger passes a local policeman who pursues. Roger looks up at the cop car behind him and gets a drunken irritated look on his face and keeps driving, until he finally slams on his breaks at a Stop sign, causing the cops to rear end him. The bad guys drive away as Roger's arrested. The next morning, Roger's mother bails him out and he's instantly on trial just like in Sullivan's Travels. I refuse to believe the judicial system worked that way. Roger claims some bad guys kidnapped him and forced him to drink and drive and no one believes him of course, not even his mother. They go to the house and a woman who was there last night calls Roger "George" and tells the cops he drank too much and borrowed someone else's car when no one was looking and they were very worried. Roger demands to talk to "Townsend" who was there last night, but the woman says Townsend works at the UN and is there right now. The cops drop the whole thing and let Roger go because clearly nothing at all fishy is going on here.
Roger and his mother somehow learn that the real "George Kaplan" is staying at a hotel (??) and they go there to confront him. There's a friendly maid and a valet who talk to Roger and think he's George even though they admit they've never seen him before. This goes on for a while, with Roger and his mom just hanging out in George's hotel room after stealing a key and then just looking at each other not knowing what to do. Roger sees a day planner or something and sees that Kaplan has a meeting the next day in Chicago. Finally, the phone rings, and Roger for some reason answers. It's the goons from last night, calling to see if "George" is in. Roger says he's not George, but that claim is pretty hard to believe at this point.
He and his mom book it to the elevator and get on just as the goons are getting off. They double back and get on the elevator too. So now Roger, his mom, the goons, and a bunch of extras are all on the elevator. Roger keeps looking at his mom and trying to indicate to her that those are the bad guys and finally she gets it and says, "You're not really going to kill my son, are you?" Everyone in the elevator stares at her in awkward silence. The elevator opens, and Roger dashes it, fully ditching his mom and runs outside and into a cab. He heads for the UN where he finds Townsend, who is not the man from last night. He explains to Townsend that someone else is in his home pretending to be him, and suddenly someone throws a knife in Townsend's back. He falls over into Roger's arms. Roger: A: Grabs the knife. B: Pulls it out of Townsend's back. C: Brandishes it as people scream and D: Stands still while a nearby photographer takes his picture. Then he throws down the knife and runs out. Roger is dumb.
Then there's a weird exposition scene where a bunch of CIA guys stand around and talk about how poor Roger Turnhill is an unfortunate fall guy who is taking the rap for being a spy named George Kaplan when George Kaplan doesn't exist. The real spy is some other mystery person who is spying on a guy named Van Damme who is Russian or something and bad (feel free to imagine Jean-Claude, because it's fun). The goons work for him, and he was the one earlier pretending to be Townsend. Then the CIA people stare at the camera and say, "Is everybody clear on that?"
Roger, wanted for the murder of Townsend, decides to flee by train to Chicago and confront Kaplan. He sneaks onboard without buying a ticket and when the conductor chases him, a sexy blonde woman named Eve sees all this go down, and protects him by telling the conductor he got off.
Then they have dinner on the train, and she's all super sexy Jessica Rabbity, and he hilariously says that he hates the part where men have to converse with beautiful women and pretend they don't want to sleep with them and she says why pretend? Eve says she recognizes his picture in the paper and knows he's wanted for murder but doesn't care. He says he would invite her to his place but doesn't have one. She invites him to stay at hers. The double and triple entendres are all doing it doggy style at this point.
Back at her private car, they make out on the bed awhile until the porter comes and Roger hides in the bathroom while the porter cleans the car or something. There are a lot of maids and service people in this movie. Then Roger comes back out, all "where were we?" They kiss some more, but the camera lingers on her lying female eyes of deception that DO NOT CLOSE even while kissing.
Outside, the porter knocks on another car, and it opens and it's Van Damme and his goons. The porter hands them a note from Eve that says, "I've got him. What are your orders?" DUN DUN DUN.
At Chicago, Eve gets off the train with Roger dressed as a train employee, carrying her luggage. In fact, every passenger has a red-capped train employee carrying their luggage. If this movie has taught me nothing else, it's that people where really lazy in the Olden Times.
The cops are in Chicago with pictures of Roger, looking at all the passengers, but Eve and Roger in costume breeze on by. Roger says he has to get to a phone booth and call Kaplan and arrange a meeting. Eve says she better do with while he changes. Roger agrees. Suddenly, a tied-up train employee in his underwear jumps off the train and says he was robbed. The police start frantically searching each train employee, but there are dozens of them among hundreds of departing passengers, and Eve and Roger manage to slip away.
Later, Eve the LIAR says she talked to Kaplan and they're to meet at a bus stop on the highway. But she looks all super conflicted and stuff. Roger goes there by himself and gets off the bus. It's a totally empty long stretch of highway. He stares for awhile, not sure what to do, while a few cars pass him by. Suddenly, a low flying and cinematic crop duster plane starts trying to dive-bomb him and also firing at him. He runs and dives and runs more and the plane keeps going around in circles lining up for another shot and Roger runs into the street where a giant oil truck almost hits him and then the crop duster crashes into the oil truck and everything goes boom. Roger runs off.
Roger hitches a ride to Kaplan's hotel, having figured out Eve lied to him and tries to confront Kaplan there, but he already checked out (and doesn't exist). But Eve is there. He pretends to not know she lied and asks her to dinner. She gets a phone call and writes down an address on a scrap of paper on a notepad and then tears it off and says she has to leave now for an important meeting. Roger lets her leave and then uses a pencil to scribble on the notepad and see what she wrote. Clearly, this is what The Big Lebowski was riffing off of with the penis drawing, so that's cool. He follows her to an auction, where she's all schoompy with Van Damme. Van Damme is buying a special statue thing that has secret microfilm in it that will maybe destroy the world or something. Perhaps "lasers" are involved. Roger confronts them both and calls her a fucking whore like ten million times but in polite Olden Times language and her eyes burn with shame and tears because girls are weak. Van Damme signals his goons who wait by the doorway to grab Roger and kill him dead. But Roger's new plan is to make a bunch of crazy bids that are both way too high and way too low on the auction items and cause such a spectacle that the cops arrest him, which they do. No sooner is he arrested that the cops are informed by radio to take him to blah blah place where he meets the exposition CIA guys from earlier who explain to him the whole plot including the new fact that Eve is the super secret real spy! But now Van Damme is suspicious of her and so they concoct a plan for him to confront Eve in front of Van Damme and company in a public place and she'll shoot him with a gun with blanks and then run away. They do this and it all works out. So now Van Damme trusts Eve and will take her on his secret spy trip with her to wherever where she can find out his secret plans to whatever and kill Americans probably. But now Roger doesn't want her to go, and angrily confronts the CIA guys about sending a "girl" to try and stop the bad guys. The CIA guys look duly ashamed for employing and training an attractive blonde woman. But they insist Eve carry out the mission she trained and signed up for and still right now is telling Roger she wants to do, almost as if she has her own agency and autonomy. They check Roger into a hospital, as he's supposed to have been shot, but he breaks out and goes to Van Damme's hideout, which is a giant house right by Mt Rushmore, because sure it is.
He stares in the window while a goon talks to Van Damme and Eve just hangs out pretending to still be Van Damme's girl. He continues to...just stare and watch because there's literally no fucking reason for him to be there, and if he's discovered he'll expose Eve and this is just super dumb. They talk about how they're taking a private plane to wherever in a few minutes and soon they'll have taken the statue to wherever and then they'll win! But then Eve goes to the bathroom and lucky for Roger the goon tells Van Damme he doesn't trust Eve and then shoots Van Damme. But Van Damme isn't killed, because the gun had blanks and the goon explains it was the gun that Eve used to "shoot" Roger. Now Van Damme knows Eve's a double agent and Roger knows he knows so now there's a point to him being there. Still dumb. Van Damme's plan is to take her up in the plane and then throw her out, which is way more dramatic than just killing her right now. But Roger warns her and they mange to overpower Van Damme and steal the magic statue and run away. They dramatically attempt to climb down Mt Rushmore as the goons and Van Damme give chase. At one point, a goon catches up to him and leaps upon ad exec Roger and fights him while CIA agent Eve screams like a girl and watches, doing nothing. Roger pushes the goon off and down he goes off Roosevelt's nose and into oblivion. Another goon falls as well. Then Van Damme struggles with Eve and tries to push her off, but Roger punches him out, but she falls anyway, and barely clings to the ledge. Roger tries to pull her up, but slips himself. Now he's holding the ledge with one hand while holding Eve with the other. Van Damme walks forward all cocky and steps on Roger's hand, but is suddenly shot by the CIA agents, who have magically materialized, perhaps summoned by the statue. Eve is slipping...slipping...Roger pulls...and suddenly, a jump cut and they're back on the train, married, and he's pulling her into bed on the top bunk. Nice.
Review: There's a lot of good stuff here, a lot of fun humor, some great sexual chemistry between Grant and Eva Marie Saint, who was particularly great. Lots of quotable lines, and the crazy bidding at the auction was something almost straight out of Naked Gun. Made me laugh a lot. I guess the funny/not funny demarcation line for me is sometime before 1959. The plot was complicated and dizzying, which was fun, but also super sloppy and lazy at times, which was not. Very reminiscent of Dexter, actually. The statue and the microfilm inside it and its purpose was maddeningly vague and an obvious macguffin. It really just seemed like Hitchcock wanted to do this cool cinematic scene and those funny or sexy lines of dialog, and didn't really care how we got there at all. The pacing was weird, too. Sometimes things were way too rushed, and other times they took forever cluing is in on stuff we had long since figured out. It's the rare movie that is actually less than the sum of its parts. But the parts were admittedly pretty great.
Stars: Three out of five.
Next, "MASH", with a Hawkeye, Trapper, Henry, and Hot Lips who I don't know at all. And then "The Deer Hunter".
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