Synopsis
The wife of an American doctor suddenly vanishes in Paris and, to find her, he navigates a puzzling web of language, locale, laissez-faire cops, triplicate-form filling bureaucrats and a defiant, mysterious waif who knows more than she tells.
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Cast
- Harrison FordDr. Richard Walker
- Emmanuelle SeignerMichelle
- Betty BuckleySondra Walker
- Dominique PinonWino
- Jacques CironLe Grand Hotel Manager
- John MahoneyWilliams
- Jimmie Ray WeeksShaap
- David HuddlestonPeter
- Alexandra StewartEdie
- Yorgo VoyagisKidnapper
Recommendations
- 80
The New York Times
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. - 80
Los Angeles Times
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. - 80
TV Guide Magazine
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. - 75
Chicago Sun-Times
Even with its excesses, Frantic is a reminder of how absorbing a good thriller can be. - 75
Chicago Tribune
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. - 70
Time Out London
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. - 70
Washington Post
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. - 60
Empire
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.
