Alive

Despite some minor Hollywood flourishes, this Buena Vista release is a superb and unflinching glimpse into the reserves of the human spirit. [13 Jan 1993]

While Alive is a superb ensemble piece with a half dozen other notable performances, its strength lies with its spirituality. [15 Jan 1993, p.8]

Despite being broadly classified as an "adventure", it has depth and breadth that would put many dramas to shame. Well-produced, acted, and scripted, this is a film that has to be seen to be experienced, even by those who know the entire story. Read full review

Alive draws considerable power from staying more human than heroic. Read full review

Unlike the cheapie late-1970s Mexican exploitation movie Survive!, this sobering account of a 1972 Andes plane crash has a spiritual quality that makes the tougher aspects of the story easier to handle. [15 Jan 1993, p.16]

The acting is quite good, and Marshall keeps suspense as high as possible, considering we all know the eventual conclusion. [15 Jan 1993, p.3E]

What Alive does show is engrossing, a virtually unique experience re-created thrillingly and surely as faithfully as we can stand. [15 Jan 1993, p.13]

Alive is no Oscar-challenger, certainly, but it does treat a very dicey incident with the even-keeled direction the story deserves. Read full review

WQhat would it really be like to huddle in a wrecked aircraft for 10 weeks in freezing weather, eating human flesh? I cannot imagine, and frankly this film doesn't much help me. Read full review

Pictorially, Alive is breathtaking. But there's no real exploration of character or primal drives. [15 Jan 1993, p.48]

The film manages to make the large ensemble, led by Ethan Hawke and Vincent Spano, seem noble at their blackest hour. It's an interesting feat. The rest of the movie, which was directed by Frank Marshall, Steven Spielberg's longtime collaborator and a director of relatively recent vintage (Arachnophobia), plays out much like a TV movie, plotted according to carefully timed peaks and valleys, alternating high drama with comic relief -- and just a bit too well-mannered for its own good. [15 Jan 1993, p.G5]

Not exactly light entertainment and it can drag in places but when the drama is cranked up, it really works. Read full review

Alive does everything it ought to except the one thing you really want with a story like this, and that is transcend its material. A once-in-a-lifetime situation, filled with incidents that almost defy belief, calls for more of a once-in-a-lifetime movie, and that is beyond this film’s powers. Read full review

As engrossing as it is, the movie still tells only half the story: the other, nobler half. Read full review

It's a well-meaning picture, but it doesn't have enough imagination to become as involving as it would like. [22 Jan 1993, p.11]

Despite much fervent talk of the beauty of the mountains and the closeness of God, Alive peters out. [25 Jan 1993, p.55]

Marshall is a good technician, but there's no sense of artistic adventure in his sometimes exciting, sometimes draggy movie. Read full review

In this touching story of boy toys helping boy toys, it's almost impossible to root for characters who are dead in the first place. Read full review

Alive remains remarkably colorless, despite its difficult subject and the harrowing adventure it describes. Read full review

Skilfully crafted and doggedly performed, the film pushes too hard and too far; it strives for the inspirational but falls well short of inspired. Read full review

It doesn’t help that character personalities generally aren’t distinct enough to keep track of who’s who throughout the story, leaving the audience to empathize only generally. Read full review

Director Frank Marshall mounts the story as tastefully as possible, given the subject matter, but it never seems to have much point and is sometimes unintentionally silly. Read full review

Alive represents one of Hollywood's increasingly rare attempts to create a religious drama, but that novelty aside, the film is stiff, overlong and frequently risible. [15 Jan 1993, p.F]

Although the film doesn't live up to complexities of the human issues -- nor the awesome tragedy -- that must have been faced in real life, what you feel watching it is a mixture of horror, moral self-examination, a tinge of inspiration, and -- let's face it on these winter nights -- you feel cold. [15 Jan 1993, p.C1]

Alive is an unsettling contradiction: a well-intentioned gross-out movie. It may be the first film in history to say that cannibalism is good for you. Read full review

Frankly, those wonderfully corny old high-in-the-sky Airport movies were more dramatically satisfying than this, a barren adaptation of Piers Paul Read's nonfiction bestseller, directed by Frank Marshall. Read full review

Even though Frank Marshall's latest film Alive is based on a true story of survival, it lacks the very qualities it means to celebrate - spark, imagination and spirit. [16 Jan 1993]