Product Description

HARRISON FORD PLAYS AN AMERICAN SURGEON TRYING TO RESCUE HIS WIFE FROM TERRORISTS IN PARIS.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13015 in DVD
• Brand: WARNER HOME VIDEO
• Released on: 2004-06-01
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 120 minutes

Amazon.com
Living in exile in Paris after eluding a controversial charge of statutory rape in America, director Roman Polanski seemed professionally adrift during the 1980s, making only one film (the ill-fated Pirates) between 1979 and 1988. Then Polanski found inspiration--and a major star in Harrison Ford--to make Frantic, a thriller that played directly into Polanski's gift for creating an atmosphere of mystery, dread, escalating suspense, and uncertain fate. Set in Paris (Polanski couldn't go to Hollywood, so Hollywood came to him), the story begins when an American heart surgeon (Ford) arrives in the City of Lights with his wife (Betty Buckley) for a medical convention. They check into a posh hotel, and in a brilliantly directed scene, Ford takes a shower and emerges to find that his wife has vanished. This mysterious disappearance--and a confusion between two identical pieces of luggage--leads Ford into the Paris underground and a plot that grows increasingly dangerous as he approaches the truth of his wife's disappearance. The plot gets too complicated, and the pace drops off in the cluttered second half, but in Polanski's capable hands the film is blessed with moments of heightened suspense in the tradition of classic thrillers. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

What a lousy transfer of a great movie
The movie is really excellent, 4 stars anyway. The following comments pertain to the quality of the transfer to DVD. In that respect, let's make sure we're on the same page. On the spine of the case of this DVD is the WB logo, the designation "DVD Video", and the number 11787. In the back description on the case, it is designated: "STANDARD VERSION: This film has been modified from is (sic) original version: It has been formatted to fit your screen." In other words, it's a pan-and-scan version, and indeed one that is so bad that critical information during the movie is lopped off the visible viewing area. The image quality is grainy and disgusting, like a transfer from some old VHS video tape that's been laying around on a dusty shelf ever since the movie was made. The sound quality stinks: One must turn up the volume to near maximum in order to hear the dialog, which even then is badly muffled at times. Whoever at Warner Brothers was responsible for this mess demonstrates their total contempt for the customer.

Worthy of Hitchcock....
Like BLADE RUNNER before it, when FRANTIC came out in U.S theaters in 1988, it's box-office performance was rather dissappointing. The reason for this can be attributed to the fact that FRANTIC (like BLADE RUNNNER) was not cranked out by the Hollywood cookie cutter machine, and therefore not a movie for American masses. Delving a bit deeper into this, there are aspects of the film's feel, plot, performance and score that I'd like to touch on:

FEEL

Despite the fact that it's made by Warner Bros., FRANTIC has a distinctive European production feel to it. Yes, it's filmed in Paris,but the feel, pace and cinematography make one realize that Frantic is really a European film which has an American star at its helm. It's not often that big stars, such as Harrison Ford, step out of the Hollywood production scene to make a European-type feature. It's no surprise, then, that FRANTIC was hugely successfull in Europe.

PLOT

The film has the spirit of Hitchcock throughout it. Even its premise: Harrison Ford's(Dr. Richard Walker) wife mysteriously vanishes from his hotel upon arriving in Paris for a conference. It differes from other films with a similar plot (such as THE VANISHING and BREAKDOWN), in that the audience is just as at a loss as Walker is. We only know what he knows. We discover parts of the mystery as he methodically puts the peices together. This aspect is what really creates the film's gripping suspense and makes one relate and empathise with Dr. Walker's anguish. In the afore mentioned movies, there is a bi-linear plot where we see what is going on from the kidnapper's point of view, which make things all-too obvious.

PERFORMANCE

For those critics that say that Harrison Ford can't act, they obviously haven't seen this movie. To me, this is his best perfmance of his illustrious career. Harrison Ford is required to be in every scene of the film, since he is our eyes and ears. This is not an easy job, even for the most seasoned of actors, but Ford pulls it off masterfully.

SCORE

Ennio Morricone's score for this film is very appropriate. He weaves in suspensfull strings throughout the film along with jazzy undertoans and meloncholy pieces brilliantly complementing the Ford's performance and Polanski's vision. The opening and closing titles are distinctively Morricone, mixing an orchestra strings theme with an electric bass and drum set. Alas, the soundtrack CD has been out of print for years.....

FRANTIC is not a perfect film, but clearly, it has not been given the credit that it deserves. It is a film that should not go unnoticed by movie-goers that appreciate atmospheric, suspense-filled thrillers with first-class permormances.

Average movie redemmed by excellent music & performances
This isn't the greatest Harrison Ford or Roman Polanski movie. The solid performance by Ford, the film debut of Emmanuelle Seigner, and a fantastic score by Ennio Morricone elevate it a notch. Ford plays an American doctor, on a trip to Paris with his wife when she mysteriously disappears from their hotel room. The Paris police and the US Embassy are no help so he sets out to find her on his own. Emmanuelle Seigner (Polanski's very young wife) plays Michelle, a naive drug runner who happened to pick up the wrong luggage, his wifes, at the airport. They team up to solve the mystery. The cliches that show up in this movie are disappointing; The bumbling US Authorities, the Arab "businessmen". Polanski keeps it rolling along though. It isn't even close to being as good as "Chinatown" or any of the classis Hitchcock movies. The score is fantastic. And although Morricone is better know for the Sergio Leone film scores, this one should not be missed by any fans. He provides the perfect soundscape for the seedier side of the City Of Lights. The DVD capabilities are wasted. There are no added features and they didn't even bother releasing it in widescreen.