Frantic

Frantic generates its suspense precisely because it appears so reasonable, because it takes such a calm, methodical approach to the maddening events that lure Dr. Walker into the maelstrom. Read full review

In Roman Polanski's Frantic--an elegant, icy thriller about an American doctor chasing his wife's kidnapers through the deadlier byways of Paris--we can tell after 10 minutes that we're in the hands of a superb craftsman. Read full review

Director Polanski, a master of movie atmospherics (e.g., Chinatown, Rosemary's Baby), here creates a hauntingly foreign, forbiddingly stylish Paris that seems to move to the oneiric disco stylings of Grace Jones. Harrison Ford, outstanding as an American innocent abroad, moves persuasively from complacency to confusion, rage, and paranoid desperation in a performance comparable to James Stewart's best work for Hitchcock. Read full review

Even with its excesses, Frantic is a reminder of how absorbing a good thriller can be. Read full review

Ford`s character is disoriented from the very beginning of the movie, suffering from jet lag, and you can view the movie as one long tourist`s nightmare. Although the suspense never reaches the level of Polanski`s finest work-there are plot holes that are enormous-the film is well made technically and has so many twists and turns that one can`t help but want stick around to see how it turns out. In other words, you have just read a guarded recommendation. Read full review

Roman Polanski's Frantic is taut, intelligent filmmaking, and highly accomplished in a way that doesn't substitute flash for coherence or the pleasures of a well-told story. In other words, it's everything that Lethal Weapon and a half dozen other recent Hollywood thrillers weren't. [26 Feb 1988, p.B1]

Polanski has always inspired comparisons to Hitchcock, back to Cul-de-Sac and up to Rosemary's Baby and beyond, but this is the first time he has intentionally set out to replicate the thrills, chills and laughter of Hitchcock's best work. He succeeds, but with a difference: the last half-hour, at once improbable and horrible and self-referentially satiric, is pure Polanski. [27 Feb 1988]

Polanski's thriller boasts several superb set pieces, even if it doesn't quite snap shut on the mind the way Chinatown did. Funny and unsettling. Read full review

Frantic is vintage Polanski, with its relentless paranoia, irony, diffident strangers and nutty cameos. And Polanski forgoes the mood-marshalling Hitchcock cellos for his own brand of good old quiet tension -- here made eerier by Witold Sobocinski's high and low camera angles. Read full review

Frantic is Polanski's most satisfying film since Chinatown, and one of the best traditional thrillers to come down the pike in quite some time. Read full review

Frantic is a thriller without much surprise, suspense or excitement. Drama about an American doctor's desperate search for his kidnapped wife through the demi-monde of Paris reveals director Roman Polanski's personality and enthusiasm only in brief humorous moments. Read full review

Polanski treats the hotel with the same virtuosity he displayed in filming the apartment in Rosemary's Baby, one of the most deeply satisfying thrillers ever made. Frantic doesn't maintain this level: there are some irritating illogicalities, and Polanski hasn't fully mined the possibilities of all the elements in his screenplay (cowritten with Gerard Brach), such as Arab terrorists in Paris and the tiny nuclear-bomb trigger they are after. [07 Mar 1988, p.68]

Frantic is an engrossing character study, but as a thriller it sometimes relies on cliches. For starters, the whole mess is triggered by a case of mixed-up suitcases. A drug shipment? No, worse: a device that could give some Arab bad guys nuclear weapons. Several action scenes are lifted from the Hitchcock style, but they don't capture the master's sense of suspense. Polanski weaves in moments of dark humor amid all the intrigue. [01 Mar 1988, p.1D]

It opens promisingly, with a fine sense of the disorientation of a monolingual tourist abroad and in trouble. But instead of things building from there, the energy gradually dissipates, and by the time the mystery is solved, it's difficult to care very much. Read full review

Polanski, who seldom has a problem with directorial conviction, falters here. He tries to gives us Alfred Hitchcock, without much success. Frantic works best when Polanski delivers Polanski -- that sharp-edged vision that injects a harrowing situation with black humor, even slapstick. [27 Feb 1988, p.B1]

Certainly, the elements for a better movie are here. The credits are dotted with multi-Oscar nominees. But not all are well used. What Frantic needs most is an infusion of chemistry. Somehow Polanski has failed to make these actors connect. Read full review