I think the best way to describe Alfred Hitchcock is that he is a director who likes to stay in his comfort zone but who is brilliant at finding every unexplored area of it. There aren't many of his films that you watch and are surprised to learn he made it. There's no way The 39 Steps came from anyone other than the director who made North By Northwest. That's not possible. But the two are different enough to not feel like he's repeating the same story. In fact, you can track his growth as a filmmaker comparing the two.
This is a rudimentary spy thriller by any modern assessment. The assorted ways that Robert Donat's Richard Hanney gets away are laughable. He's saved from a gunshot by a prayer book catching the bullet. He even runs into the oldest of tropes: a guy walks into a room and is confused for the person about to give a speech to a room of people. To be fair, Hitchcock has a sense of humor about much of this. I love the silliness of the entire masterplan of a criminal syndicate relying on a guy with a really good memory remembering stuff. That's next level silly. Could you imagine the beating a movie made today would take if it was about a massive criminal syndicate that relies entirely on, a person remembering a priceless numerical code? Well, it turns out that movie is called Safe. It was made in 2012 with Jason Statham and a little girl is the one with the magic code. 58% Rotten Tomatoes. 55 Metacritic. 0 awards or "Best of" lists*. You probably don't remember it. For a reason. In fact, if I told you I just made the movie up, you'd probably believe me.
*For comparison, The 39 Steps was rated as the 4th best British film of
the 20th century by the British Film Institute at one point and has a 96% on
Rotten Tomatoes. I'm not sure what my point is, but I think it's something like
"Don't tell me the Hitchcock brand doesn't make people forgive problems in
a movie".
Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend
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