Sorry, this movie sucks

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

When an American woman in Paris disappears in mysterious circumstances, the search that follows proves to be challenging and provides director Roman Polanski with the opportunity to suffuse the whole drama with the kind of tension and paranoia that he's so skilled at creating. His low key delivery of the action, generates strong feelings of suspicion and distrust about everything that happens and puts his audience firmly in the shoes of the movie's main protagonist who, as well as being ill-equipped for the task that he's taken on, also has to overcome numerous obstacles, frustrations and setbacks before being able to make any meaningful progress in his search to discover what's happened to his wife.American doctor Richard Walker (Harrison Ford) who's scheduled to attend a medical convention in the city and his wife Sondra (Betty Buckley) arrive in Paris with the intention of combining business with pleasure and freshen up in their hotel room as they try to recover from being jet-lagged. A minor problem arises when they realize that Sondra had mistakenly picked up the wrong suitcase at the airport and they fully expect that a telephone call to TWA will enable the matter to be resolved. When Richard is subsequently taking a shower, Sondra disappears and the baffled doctor turns to the hotel manager and Head of Security for assistance but neither of these unconcerned-looking men is able to help. After meeting with the same kind of insouciance from U.S Embassy officials and the local police, Richard realizes that his only option is to carry out his own search.Despite his inability to speak French, Richard manages to make some progress when he's informed by an unreliable-looking drinker at a nearby bar that two friends of his had seen a woman fitting Sondra's description being pushed into a car by a man in an adjacent alley and this information is given some credence when Richard finds his wife's identity bracelet close-by. An off-duty receptionist from his hotel also tells him that he'd seen Sondra leaving the hotel accompanied by a Middle Eastern man and this convinces Richard that his wife has been kidnapped. His biggest break comes when something he discovers in the case which Sondra had picked up, leads him to the discovery of a murdered drug dealer and a meeting with a young woman called Michelle (Emmanuelle Seigner).It transpires that the bubblegum-chewing, black leather clad, Michelle is a drug smuggler and it was her case that Sondra had picked up in error. Although she has no knowledge of what was in the case and doesn't care, the potential loss of the 10,000 francs that she was due to be paid for her work is a matter of great concern to her. For this reason, she readily teams up with Richard in his mission to find his wife and hopefully use the contents of the case to secure Sondra's release from her kidnappers.The most striking features of this unconventional thriller are the ways in which its deliberate pacing is used to generate suspense and its lack of action sequences is used instead to emphasise the levels of desperation, fear and anxiety that Richard experiences during an investigation that takes him into the kinds of underworld locations and meetings with people who, in normal circumstances, he would make every effort to avoid. "Frantic" is also littered with Hitchcockian influences such as a MacGuffin, hazardous rooftop sequences and the presence of an ordinary guy who has to deal with some extraordinary challenges.Musically, the inclusion of Grace Jones' "I've Seen That Face Before" is perfect because its haunting quality complements the atmosphere of the piece so well and also evokes the kind of sleaziness which Dr Walker encountered during his investigation.Dr Richard Walker and his actions are consistently the main focus of this movie and for this reason, Harrison Ford's performance is pivotal to its success. The fact that his character is so normal and relatable makes him easy to empathize with and of course, very believable. Emmanuelle Seigner also adds some colour as the lively, streetwise, drug smuggler who is completely amoral and constantly motivated only by self-interest.,

Harrison Ford, Emmanuelle Seigner, and Betty Buckley star in Frantic, a 1988 film directed by Roman Polanski and filmed in Paris.Ford is Dr. Richard Walker, who travels to Paris with his wife Sondra (Buckley) -- they originally spent their honeymoon there, and he's due to deliver a paper at a medical convention. When they reach their hotel, they discover that Sondra picked up the wrong suitcase at the airport. While he's in the shower, the phone rings. Sondra, fresh from the shower herself, picks it up and attempts to get her husband's attention. When she can't, we see her get some clothing. When Richard emerges from the shower, she's gone. And he can't find her. Anywhere.Richard asks around and learns that she left with a man in a car. Then he finds her bracelet on the ground. Panicked, he goes to the Embassy and the police and gets nowhere. Digging through the suitcase, he finds a matchbook for the Blue Parrot nightclub. Inside there is a name and phone number written. This leads him ultimately to Michelle (Seigner), whose suitcase he has. She has left his wife's suitcase in a locker, and now whomever hired her wants what was inside the suitcase Sondra mistook for hers. In order to make sure they receive it, they've taken Sondra.I saw this film years ago. I only remembered there was a French woman in it (with Ford, whom I also remembered), and a scene in a parking garage. If you haven't seen the film, when you see the scene in the parking garage, you'll know why I remembered it.Really excellent, exciting, suspenseful film, with Ford in top form as a tough man fighting to keep control of his emotions as he deals with bureaucrats and frustration. He has two great telephone scenes: one with his daughter, where he tries to keep from breaking down; and one with a man at the embassy (John Mahoney) where he struggles with his anger. When the concierge asks if he's been to Paris before, he says yes, they were there on their honeymoon. "Could she know someone here she has been thinking about?" he asks. Ford answers, "SINCE JUNE 15, 1968??" Emmanuelle Seigner, who married Polanski after this film, is gorgeous and creates an interesting, quirky character. According to what I read, she says she was 19 when she did this film; actually she was 21.I had three small problems with this movie: I found the ending a little strange (it's not the original one, it turns out); and I didn't understand throughout the whole film why Walker didn't ask the hotel to give him the phone number of the person who called their hotel room. Maybe they didn't have that information. My third problem was the casting of Betty Buckley as Ford's wife. She seemed a little miscast, but then, maybe I'm just not used to seeing leading men in films married to women within five years of their own age instead of 15 or 20 years.One thing that gave me a chuckle was the fact that Walker misses his speech and then runs into some drunk doctors attending the convention. I used to transcribe medical conferences -- there really aren't any more, thanks to the antics shown in this film.At any rate, Polanski's direction is masterful in this straightforward Hitchcock-type story. Great rental if you haven't seen it.

I created an account on IMDb just to rate this movie. Atmosphere? Yes. The rest was pretty lousy. I love a good thriller and can even forgive a hole or two in the plot, but this one was unforgivable. Here are just some of the holes (if you want to ignore my advice and watch the movie anyway, don't read what follows). First, why would the kidnapper take the wife instead of the suitcase? That makes no sense. How is kidnapping her going to get the thing back? Second, why didn't the husband take the first eyewitness (or his friends) to the police? Third, when he found Dede dead, why didn't he go to the police and say, hey, look: a matchbook from the suitcase with a murdered guy's name on it--coincidence? Fourth, why didn't the husband ask Michelle what it was she brought back? That might be important! Fifth, when the police finally believed him, why didn't he let them handle it? Sixth, he's hiding in Michelle's apartment while she is being interrogated by the bad guys--so he takes off ALL his clothes and jumps into her bed to pretend to be her irate boyfriend--this is supposed to scare off these brutal criminals?!! Seventh, after the husband took off his shoes and socks to keep from slipping on the roof, why did he let the girl go out there in tights and high heels? Duh! Eighth, those French sniffer dogs should be fired for not finding the coke in his pocket--what was the whole purpose of him having the coke, anyway, just the "white lady" confusion? Lame. Ninth, so at the end, when the husband destroys the maguffin--the bad guys are just going to hang their heads? Really?!! They're not going to beat the living daylights out of him? Finally, why did the girl have to die? Are we supposed to feel sorry for the husband at that point? Did he fall in love with her? "Puerile" is the word for a director who thinks he would.I read a user review that said everything in this movie fits together. Puhleeeeaaaaase! I feel like this movie was a bunch of hacks trying to make a quick buck. Did Polanski even show up on the set or did he just delegate to others ("make it look like Hitchcock") and put his name on it? It does have the feel of Hitchcock but not the intelligence. Don't waste your time like I did, unless you're a die-hard Hitchcock fan and want to see a failed homage.

Frantic. It's an odd name, because this late 80s European thriller is anything but. Since the days of Master of Suspense™ Hitchcock, writers and directors have been looking at new ways of doing it. The approach of Roman Polanski and his co-writer Gerard Brach takes on a languid, brooding pace, as oppose to the breakneck action and suspenseful pacing typical to the genre.Brach and Polanski have always typically written movies that just about conform to usual narrative and genre conventions, but filled with a kind of bleak fatalism that seems counter even to darkness of film noir and its descendents. In his travels the hero of Frantic has encounters that are depressing in their familiarity. Unhelpful authorities are of course a staple of any kind of DIY crime-solving thriller, but what is so chilling here is not just the indifference of the authorities, but the believable nature of their indifference. And this is very typical of Frantic; it doesn't often step outside of plausibility for the sake of excitement. In your average thriller, when the Liberty figurine falls from the roof, it would have been picked up by a Mossad agent (or someone) before Harrison Ford and Emmanuelle Seigner could recover it, and a chase would have ensued. Here it is simply an annoying fumble that emphasises the amateurish nature of the lead characters.Given that then, how does Frantic manage to thrill and engross its audience? Quite simply, with the way it is shot. Polasnki unsettles his audiences with a camera that often shuffles around at a pace at-odds with what is happening on screen. When Ford runs into his old friends at the airport, they are full of bubbly bustle, but the camera creeps around, most unnervingly. The few action scenes tend to be played out with fewer cuts then would be expected, giving them an excruciating real-time feel. There's always a strong sense of helplessness in Polanski's images. The last glimpse we have of Ford's wife before she is kidnapped is from inside a shower, through a narrow doorway – and it is she who exits the shot, not the camera that leaves her. There are a lot of set-ups like this throughout the movie. They look so confining they give us a palpable urge to step out of the space, but the camera confounds us by staying put. The frustrating wrongness of Polanski's shots really helps to involve us in the emotions of the story.Frantic is not without its flaws. Harrison Ford is far from his best here, although he's not really given room to act well by the script in any case, except in the scene where he phones his children, in which he is adequate. The story is packed with a lot of rather obvious symbolism (the little Statue of Liberty is hardly a MacGuffin in this respect!). And yet, in the grander scheme of the movie, these are minor issues. There is ultimately a surprising amount of beauty and humanity in Frantic - the aching Ennio Morricone score, the sudden revelation of anti-war themes in the final act. It somehow makes all the bleakness and languor worthwhile.