Frantic (1988)

¨Frantic" is a vibrant and exciting thriller of Polish director Roman Polanski . The story deals with the assistance to a conference in Paris of doctor "Richard Walken" (Harrison Ford) and his wife (Betty Buckley), and reliving their honeymoon. In the hotel room when Richard goes out the bathroom after a shower , he discovers his spouse has disappeared on the first day of their journey . Now , at an unknown metropolis , without speaking a word of French language and agonizingly alone , "Walken" undertakes the search throughout wet streets and under rainy sky . As the only track he has results to be a number of telephone written on a matchbox, and from there the issue will be complicate , becoming for the American doctor in a nightmare . He's only helped by the US Embassy assistant (John Mahoney) and a strange French young Emmanuelle Seigner (Polanski's wife).

The pace of the film is well made and carefully controlled ; as the plot finds its aim , for that reason is a story that entertains and works . The picture is packed with thrills, intrigue, tension , suspense and blending the Hitchcock style with the Polanski's particular narrative . Harrison Ford gives a magnificent interpretation in this picture , perhaps one of his best acting . Harrison Ford makes one of his best roles and believable in his character as doctor drawn into espionage and who launches to rescue his lovely wife , though never really cuts loose . The film has a large number of memorable scenes that are the Polanski's stamp : as the start of the movie, the thrilling scenes on the roof , and the unforgettable dancing that Ford dances Emmanuelle Seigner , among others . In addition , there appears ample support cast as American as French actors in very secondary intervention as David Huddleston , Alexandra Stewart , Yorgo Voyagis ,Gerard Klein , Dominigue Pinon , among them . It has an acceptable photography by Sobozinsky , though is urgent a remastering. Rare and sad musical score by the maestro Ennio Morricone .

"Frantic" is a moving thriller from the beginning to the final in which Polanski carries out one of the basic guidelines of the genre : as he creates thriller from roles of the daily life and well written by the same Polanski and his usual screenwriter Gerard Brach . Furthermore , Polanski maintains its grip thanks to Harrison Ford 's outstanding and credible acting . Rating : 6, passable and well worth watching .

Fmovies: Frantic is a movie that bears, like Hitchock's films, repeated viewing. At first sight it might appear a Hollywood thriller of the genre that has been too prevalent lately with violence, thrills and miracle rescues. This film is much more than that. The scene where the wife tries to speak to her showering husband and he can't hear, has ominous suggestion, and echoes Hitchcock's 'silent exposition' scenes form Torn Curtain and Rear Window. It is not a copy, because Polanski has taken the idea and made it fit an entirely new scenario. The humour flits along with the tension. The scene where the husband is kicked to the ground wearing nothing but a teddy bear is a welcome relief, and the scene on the roof, like the unlikely teaser in Vertigo stands up well, despite having been imitated so many times by so many other directors. Frantic has many moments of honest acting that could almost count as cinema verite moments. At the end of the film, these moments and characters stay with you. You have been emotionally challenged. If Hitchcock had lived into the 1980s and been given this script, he would probably have done the film in a way not altogether dissimilar. A triumph for 1980s Hollywood. -Phil Kafcaloudes

(Some Spoilers) The movie "Frantic" slowly gets you to like it. It takes it's audience from a simple case of suitcases being innocently switched at the airport to an nail-biting off camera kidnapping. Then to a tour through the Paris underworld and nightlife to finally a confrontation with this mysterious Mid-East terrorist organization. The terror group is dealing with the smuggling of top-secret US government nuclear trigger mechanisms that, if in the wrong hands, can vaporise entire cities.

American Doctor Richard Walker, Harrison Ford, and his wife Sondra, Betty Buckley, arrive from San Francisco at the Grand Hotel in Paris for a doctors convention where Dr. Walker is to be the featured speaker. Finding that his luggage had been switched at the airport Walker calls TWA Airline giving them all the information including the switched luggage ticket number. With her husband taking a shower Sondra is seen answering the door and then disappears out of sight and out of the movie.

It takes a while for Walker, who thought that his wife went out shopping, to realize that something is terribly wrong when Sandra doesn't show up and goes to the hotel lobby to find out what happened to her. Walker is later told by the desk clerk that Sandra left the hotel together with a Arabic-looking man.

Walker frantic that his wife was kidnapped goes to the local police only to be told that she may be cheating on him, it's something that seems to be very common among married couples in the city. Even the US embassy doesn't seem at all too concerned or caring about his wife's disappearance. That has a desperate and determined Walker go out on his own to track down where she is, alive or dead, and who's responsible for her disappearance.

Opening up the switched luggage Walker finds a pack of matches from the Blue Parrot nightclub and the name and telephone number of a person named Dede on it. Walker also inadvertently finds the hidden nuclear trigger that he at first thinks is a ***SPOILER*** toy model of the Statue of Liberty. Finding out at the Blue Parrort that Dede is a drug dealer Walker goes to his apartment in the seedy side of the city only to find Dede, Doll Boyer, brutally murdered. Waiting in the hallway Walker sees this young woman Michelle, Emmanuell Seigner, enter Dede's pad and grabs her trying to find out what Dede and herself had to do with his wife's Sandra's disappearance. To Walker's surprise he finds that Michelle, after a bit of convincing on his part, was the person who's luggage she mistakenly has and that she's also some kind of illegal courier for a local Paris drug gang.

You and both Walker and Michelle at first think that there's illegal drugs involved with,or in, the luggage that Walker mistakenly received at the Paris Airport. As the real truth slowly and shockingly comes out with the Arab terrorists gang Israeli Mossad and now even the US embassy getting into the mix it becomes more and more evident that there's something far more serious and explosive in that misplaced suitcase. there's also the fact that if the suitcase is ever gotten into the wrong hands it can lead to a nuclear holocaust.

It takes a while for "Frantic" to unravel it's storyline, like most good thrillers do, but it's actor Harrison Ford who makes it come alive with his frantic and almost hysterical search for his missing and kidnapped wife Sondra. As he goes together with, an at first very reluctant, Michelle through t

Frantic fmovies. A great suspense movie of Roman Polanski in a Hitchcockian style. One of the beloved theme of great master is already here: looking for a vanished person. I think Frantic is one of the movies more successful through the films with the plot located in Paris. Polanski tells us the story with great suspense involving the city of Paris like a character of the film. All movie spends on the Parisian places and rooftops. The music of Ennio Morricone also is a great element of the film success that gives us a great mood. The characters as Harrison Ford and Emmanuel Seigne are superb in their roles too. I think a must see movie if you love great oeuvres of Hitchcock and you love Paris.

An excellent film from start to finish. The plot is somewhat simple, but the acting of Harrison Ford (Walker) and Emmanuelle Seigner (Michelle) throughout make it an unmissable movie. At times it seemed as if Walker and Michelle would 'get it on', especially in the dance scene in The Touch of Class Club. However Walker didn't let his mind slip for one minute, totally focused on rescuing his wife.

I really don't understand how this movie could have such a low score at this site. Perhaps the European atmosphere doesn't appeal as much to Americans as it does to Europeans.....just like most french top-films never made it to the US.

Nevertheless, Roman Polanski is terribly underrated as a master of suspence. In fact, looking back at Hitchcock's movies (which is unfair, since they've been made in a completely different era) I don't think he ever made movies written this well.

For some reason most of the time film making starts with putting the director together with some of the best or most popular actors of that period. But this one certainly doesn't.... It shows that Polanski wrote this himself, with his close friend and film-writing-partner, because he really knows what this story is about - he knows where to be funny, where to make it tense, where to make things kind of 'sensual'.

The weird thing is, that looking at all the things that happen in this movie, it's still so relatively shot, and doesn't feel at all too paced, or rushed. No, it rather feels like you are watching a 4 hour movie.

Anyway, those who have ever lost track of someone (for a short moment) in a strange, big city or those who have ever tried to find out something in France, will know and recognize exactly what Harrison Ford's character is going through - people not taking you seriously, people who don't care, people who refuse (or aren't able) to help you in your own language. All these things are put in this movie, so well, that -at least for me- it is really very realistic.

Most writers and directors nowadays seem to ruin most great movies/thrillers by not being able to make a good ending to the developing story. At one point our main character has got to find out what is happening....and how to do that, without taking away the suspence is incredibly difficult. Roman Polanski has done this very well, by not making this story too complicated and slowly unraveling a -looking back- simple mistery. There is no need to glue parts of the story together to make it all fit, or just skip parts to make it easier for him/you.

No, this is the first movie I've seen where when someone looses his shoes on a roof, he has to walk barefoot the next day. Most movies just ignore these little facts, but Roman makes it always difficult for himself in order to make it more easy (or, more easy to believe) for us.

There are no things that make me wonder 'how this is possible' - no, if you are a well known surgeon, many other surgeons from all over the world will know you. And if you will go to a convention in Paris, it's not at all unrealistic that you will run into a few of your friends...even when it's such a big city. Having problems with luggage when you're flying, isn't unrealistic too...nor is the story of this movie, the reason why what happened, happened.

Although I've never understood why our friend wanted his own wife back, instead of staying with the beautifull french girl ;) Again, that's what most people would do in real life....

Bart