Review of The Thirty Nine Steps

Although the 1935 Hitchcock version is undoubtedly the best of them all in terms of camerawork, editing and building the suspense, this version here is almost equally entertaining, and much favoured by the stunning Highlands scenery and a top-class cast. Also it is very faithful to John Buchan's 1915 novel, which is a rather short one and slow-paced and with little action. This film sticks to the novel's setting of 1914, and the art direction is fantastic with period motorcars and pre-World War I atmosphere. Robert Powell is quite good as the engineer turned overnight into amateur secret agent running for his life to reveal a gang of foreign spies set to carry out a political assassination in London. Sir John Mills is the real secret service man that gets Powell mixed up in this mess in the first place, Eric Porter plays a government high official and the excellent David Warner is, of course, the mastermind villain. The final sequence in the Big Ben is probably one of the greatest action moments in British cinema, worthy of Sir Alfred himself.