Sabotage

A perfectly average film raised up just a bit by the always deft direction of Alfred Hitchcock. The direction is snappy and brisk when it needs to be, and when it needs to raise tension, boy does it ever. The last 20 minutes or so are a master class in how to fry a viewer’s nerves, first through a long sequence with a boy transporting a package he doesn’t know is a bomb, and then a tense scene between the main couple of the movie. It’s too bad that the script is so off kilter. The total lack of explanation of the motivations of the terrorist cell is frustrating. The movie just does not care at all about explaining why. I could almost let it go as a “style of the time” thing, but the movie drops too many hints at a larger thing going on for me to feel comfortable letting it go. But worse is the movie’s lack of balance. These domestic espionage thrillers — where the spy game comes into someone’s home life — work best in one of two ways: either the viewer follows an innocent who gets sucked into it, or we watch someone try to piece together whether or not someone has a secret sinister life. Sabotage decided for a third path that’s wholly unsatisfying; right off the top, we know Verloc is guilty. We know his wife doesn’t know. And we know the detective suspects something is up, but can’t prove it. So it’s watching someone try to put together the pieces of a puzzle we already know the answer to, while a third person has to be convinced a puzzle exists. There’s just not much room there for suspense, because we’re a step ahead of almost everybody in the movie. It’s the acting and direction that get this over the hump to just above average. That in itself is a testament to the ability of Hitchcock. I just wish the script could match.