There is something absolutely wonderful about watching Cary Grant. Grant, no matter the role, always exudes an incredible amount of charisma and charm, and can carry an entire film on his back. It is, however, still preferable to see Grant in a great role in a great movie. Get the opportunity to see Grant in one of the roles he took on for master director Alfred Hitchcock and the experience is that much better. Put the film on Blu-ray in a special 50th Anniversary Edition and, well, you get the idea.
Coming to Blu-ray this week is the Grant-starring Hitchcock classic, North by Northwest. For those who don't remember, that's the one which has the climactic sequence at Mount Rushmore. It's also the one that has Eva Marie Saint as Cary Grant's love interest, James Mason as the bad guy, and the incredibly tense sequence with the crop duster attacking Grant's Roger Thornhill.
The film is one of Hitchcock's most polished pieces, and uses his oft-repeated 
trope of having an average individual thrown into extraordinary circumstances. Our average joe in this case is Roger Thornhill, New York City ad man, and something of a momma's boy. In an odd turn of events, it is actually due to his worrying about his mother that Thornhill gets mistaken for a fictional creation of our government and is kidnapped. Thornhill is quickly sucked into a world of intrigue in which the villain, Phillip Vandamm (Mason), refuses to believe that Thornhill is not Kaplan and Thornhill not only witnesses a murder at the United Nations, but actually opts to become the fake Kaplan in order to help protect a real government agent.
It is on this crazy chase across the country — with Thornhill pursuing the non-existent Kaplan, Vandamm and his cronies pursuing Thornhill, and the government pursuing everyone — that Thornhill meets up with Eve Kendall (Saint). Kendall, perhaps because Thornhill is irresistible, perhaps because he's Cary Grant, or perhaps because she has secrets of her own, finds herself brought into Thornhill's personal problems.
Built on intrigue after lie after twist, as with so many Hitchcock movies, the exact nature of the plot is far less important than the opportunity to watch the 
characters interact with each other and respond to all that happens around them. And, starring Cary Grant, what the viewer gets here are perhaps some of the best reactions ever put on film.
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