OK, I'm late to the party on this one .... When my hood latch stuck I slid a carpenter's pry bar between the hood and the body. That moved the latch so it would open. I had to do this because the cable was mis-routed and was binding. Imagine looking down at the hood latch. The cable should have entered the latch at 12 o'clock. This one was entering the latch from 7 o'clock. That explains the binding. Interestingly, there is plenty of cable length to fit properly.
Unfortunately, that binding caused the latch to be nearly impossible to open ... and then I broke the t-handle <sigh>. That's going to hurt the old wallet