| Frantic | |
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Frantic movie poster |
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| Directed by | Roman Polanski |
| Produced by | Tim Hampton Thom Mount |
| Written by | Roman Polanski Gérard Brach Robert Towne (uncredited) Jeff Gross (uncredited) |
| Starring | Harrison Ford Betty Buckley John Mahoney Emmanuelle Seigner |
| Music by | Ennio Morricone |
| Cinematography | Witold Sobocinski |
| Editing by | Sam O'Steen |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
| Release date(s) | February 26, 1988 |
| Running time | 120 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English French |
| Budget | $20,000,000 |
| Box office | $17,637,950 (USA) |
Frantic is a 1988 thriller film directed by Roman Polanski and starring Harrison Ford and Emmanuelle Seigner.
Contents |
Harrison Ford plays Dr. Richard Walker, a surgeon visiting Paris with his wife Sondra (Betty Buckley) for a medical conference. At their hotel, she is unable to unlock her suitcase, and Walker determines that she has picked up the wrong one at the airport. While Walker is taking a shower, his wife mysteriously disappears from their hotel room.
Still jet-lagged, he searches for her in the hotel with the help of a polite but mostly indifferent staff and then wanders outside to search himself. A vagrant overhears him in a café and says he saw Walker's wife being forced into a car. Walker is skeptical until he finds his wife's ID bracelet on the cobblestones. He contacts the Paris police and the US embassy, but their responses are bureaucratic and there is little hope anyone will look for her.
As Walker carries on the search himself (with input from a very sympathetic but wary desk clerk at the hotel), he stumbles onto a murder scene and then encounters the streetwise young Michelle (Emmanuelle Seigner), who had mistakenly picked up his wife's suitcase at the airport. It transpires that Michelle is a career smuggler but does not know for whom she is working. She reluctantly helps Walker in his increasingly frantic attempt to learn what was in the switched suitcase and to trade whatever it is for the return of his wife.
It turns out that hidden within a small replica of the Statue of Liberty is a krytron, a small electronic switch used in the detonators of nuclear devices. The film ends with a confrontation beside the River Seine where the terrorists release Walker's wife. However, a firefight ensues between the terrorists and Israeli agents. During the crossfire, the terrorists are killed but Michelle is also shot. Angry and upset, Walker throws the krytron into the river.
The French locations and Ennio Morricone's musical score create much of the film's atmosphere. Grace Jones' recording of "I've Seen That Face Before (Libertango)" is heard at key moments in the film.
Frantic was a critical success, but was less than successful at the box office. The film received "Two Thumbs Up" from Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert on the TV show Siskel & Ebert and The Movies.[1] Pat Collins of WWOR-TV called it "Polanski's best film ever."[2]
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