Starring: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Jessie Royce Landis
Written By: Ernest Lehman
Directed By: Alfred Hitchcock
Studio: Warner Bros
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Hitchcock’s classic North by Northwest is now available on 4k and looks great! I’ve never seen this movie but always knew the iconic score from Herrmann. The movie is a bit interesting and long for the style but it’s definitely one of Hitchcock’s best.

Some people might not know the plot of the movie, so I’ll give you a quick rundown to give you an idea. Basically an advertising executive Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) gets mistaken for somebody else from foreign spies and gets wrapped up in this cat and mouse game across the country. There’s spies, there’s an undercover agent that he falls for, microfilm, crop dusting planes trying to kill him, yadda yadda yadda, the finale ends up on Mount Rushmore.

I’ve never seen this movie before so I was interested in seeing it. I’m not the biggest Alfred Hitchcock fan. I’ve seen Psycho, The Birds, maybe pieces of Rear Window, but I can’t really say that I’m the biggest Alfred Hitchcock fan out of all the movies. I’d say this one is probably the movie to get non-Hitchcock fans to like one of his movies. It’s basically a thriller and a person that’s mistaken for somebody else and it’s really just getting down to the bottom of it. there’s not much else to it. You wanna get to the end of the movie just to see what the hell is going on. In between, there’s this romance subplot in there as well, it certainly drives the storyline along and gives Thornhill motivation.

It’s hard not to root for Cary Grant. Charming, funny and Hollywood’s leading man for so many years. Eva Marie Saint was great as well, who still happens to be alive (100 years old) as of me writing this! The two together had some chemistry and at times I didn’t know if I was just watching them flirt and be in a romance movie or a Hitchcock thriller.

The movie is an old one but still looks great in 4k UHD. There’s some grain I noticed but what are you gonna do? I haven’t seen previous editions of the movie so I can’t compare but I’d have to think this is the best the movie looks right now. It’s 65 years old so it looks excellent for that sake alone. The 4k UHD featurettes include commentary, a new featurette about the movie, the score, editing and other Hitchcock things. It was a fun one to watch. The other featurettes were from previous Blu-Ray editions.

I don’t know where I’d rank North by Northwest but I’d probably rank it top 3 of the Hitchcock movies. It looks excellent on 4k and worth owning if you’re a fan.

Features:
Audio Commentary
North by Northwest: Cinematography, Score, and the Art of the Edit
Destination Hitchcock: The Making of North by Northwest
The Master’s Touch: Hitchcock’s Signature Style
North by Northwest: One for the Ages
A Guided Tour with Alfred Hitchcock

Video:
Codec: HEVC / H.265 (62.79 Mbps)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: HDR10
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1

Audio:
English: Dolby Atmos
English: Dolby TrueHD 7.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)
French: Dolby Digital Mono
Spanish: Dolby Digital Mono
German: Dolby Digital Mono
Italian: Dolby Digital Mono
Note: Spanish Castilian & Latin

Subtitles:
English SDH, French, German SDH, Italian SDH, Spanish, Cantonese, Dutch, Korean, Mandarin (Simplified)

Bottom Line: One of Hitchcock’s finest movies
Running Time: 136 mins
Rating: NR
Extras Rating:
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