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| Frantic |
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  (6/10)
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Runtime: 120 |
| Public Rating: 7.27 (26 votes) |
Director: Roman Polanski |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Thriller/Mystery/Film Noir |
Year: 1988 |
| Writer(s): Roman Polanksi and Gerard Brach |
| Distributor: Warner Bros. |
| Reviewed by: John Ulmer |
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Before "Breakdown" and "The Game" there was Roman Polanski's paranoia thriller "Frantic."
Harrison Ford plays a doctor who, along with his wife, Sondra, takes a trip to Paris to go to a medical convention. They arrive there with everything, except for the fact that his wife has picked up the wrong bag at the airport. While he's in the shower at the hotel, his wife says something, and he can't hear her through the bathroom. And then she's gone, out the door. Ford goes looking for her. Soon he finds a drunk who says he saw his wife pushed into a van. Ford finds her necklace on the ground where the drunk says he saw them. Soon he realizes that it's something with the suitcases that made whoever-it-is-who-took-his-wife take his wife, and he embarks on a journey to get back his wife.
The first thing about "Frantic" is how the characters and dialouge are both realistic. Ford fits the tourist-yuppie-gone-frantic quite well. The world around him seems to be quite at ease, but we can see that he is not.
I can identify with Ford's character, because when I sometimes become frantic for some reason or another, it seems like the world around me has stopped and I have to find what I'm looking for. (Whether it be a lost wallet, whatever.) The world seems to be completely calm and the fact that no one really seems to care makes you even the more frantic. I like to think that's what Ford's character feels like after he finds out his wife is missing and realizes no one is doing anything about it but himself.
There's a brief appearance by John Mahoney as a police officer who doesn't seem to believe Ford's story, passing him off as a crazy tourist. Ford tells them (the two police officers) he has witnesses who saw his wife being carried away by a guy with his arm around her shoulder. "Maybe she was having a good time," Mahoney says. Ford turns to him and says, "You're talking about my wife!" He grabs Mahoney, and says, "Maybe he was carrying her out like this. He could have a gun, and say, 'don't move! Shut up!'". That is realistic filmmaking right there, because that's exactly what we always see in films; the bad guy holding someone close to his chest with a concealed weapon. It almost seems like "Frantic" is parodying this.
"Frantic," like "Breakdown," seems to lose steam sometimes, and is topped off by a ridiculous ending (though the one in "Breakdown" was ten times worse). But in the long run it's a pretty solid thriller that I personally enjoy more than "The Game" in the sense of realisticness (though "The Game" is more fun to watch as a whole, it has way too many plot holes for a serious thriller).
In the end, "Frantic" is a good thriller that is a bit too long in certain areas, but overall is a good way to spend a rainy night.
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