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A signature chase flick from director Hitchcock--essentially a remake of The Thirty-Nine Steps--in which munitions worker Bob Cummings is framed for wartime sabotage and must clear his name while on the run. The climax on the Statue of Liberty is justly famous as one of the first instances of the director placing chaos in front of symbols of order, but the director himself didn't much care for it when he realized that he had the position of the good guy and the bad guy completely backward (he switched it at the end of North by Northwest, which essentially remakes this). Interesting digressionary stops along the way, particularly at a travelling freakshow and in the lair of a cabal of urbane Nazi spies.

Not as neurotic as Hitch's later thrillers, but not as tight, either. Suffers greatly from a bland central performance by Cummings as the wrong man accused, though Pricilla Lane is fine as his tag-along love-interest, and Norman Lloyd excells as the film's version of the one-armed man. Entertaining even if it is a minor film in Hitchcock's portfolio, and of interest to anyone interested in watching the director work through an early draft of some of his major thematic concerns. But not transcendent by any means.