Sabotage Reviews

(OK) The cruelty of the kid's death impacts the film too much. All the suspense is put before it, and the movie theatre provides interesting scenes, as the one wiht a Disney cartoon...

Since I’m a huge fan of Alfred Hitchcock, I was really eager to check this flick. It is not one of his most famous features but one of those many spy movies he made in England before moving to Hollywood. It was also an adaptation of a book written by Joseph Conrad. To be honest, I haven’t read the book but I have seen another version which was made exactly 60 years later by Christopher Hampton with an all-star cast (Bob Hoskins, Patricia Arquette, Gérard Depardieu, Jim Broadbent, Christian Bale, Eddie Izzard, Robin Williams). Anyway, even though Hitchcock didn’t have such a cast, the modern technology and probably had a smaller budget, his version was still better. Indeed, the story and the characters were actually not really interesting but his directing was, as usual, really efficient, creating a really tense mood . Furthermore, even though Hitchcock said that he regretted including Stevie's death, I didn’t see it coming and I thought it was quite powerful. I thought also that Sylvia Sidney, who I didn’t know before, was really charming (Hitchcock really knew how to pick his actresses, that’s for sure) and if Marion Cotillard had made movies in 30’s, she would probably have looked like this lovely lady. To conclude, even though it is actually nothing really amazing, it remains a solid spy feature and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in Hitchcock’s work.