Frantic (1988)
Directed by Roman Polanski
The wife of an American doctor suddenly vanishes in Paris. 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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What critics compared Frantic to
Still, in aspiring to match the thrillers of Frankenheimer and Hitchcock (and Polanski’s Hitchcock homage Frantic), Unknown mostly lacks the grindhouse energy fans of Taken might come expecting; they may find the picture a little too tasteful in the hands of director Jaume Collet-Serra (Orphan) and as adapted by Oliver Butcher and Stephen Cornwell from Didier Van Cauwelaert’s novel (a.k.a.
I was reminded of Roman Polanski's " Frantic " (1988), in which Harrison Ford played a doctor attending a convention in Paris with his wife.
For those of you who missed Roman Polanski's under-appreciated 1988 Harrison Ford thriller, "Frantic", do yourselves a favor and rent (or stream) it from Netflix rather than running out to see "Unknown", the latest version of the American-caught-in-a-foreign-city formula.
And, perhaps, we're walking in the footsteps of Roman Polanski and his 1988 thriller Frantic -- also about an American on business in a European city (Harrison Ford), who finds himself in the centre of a conspiracy.
2. Ford's a good analogy, because Neeson's new film "Unknown" is basically a worse, more ludicrous, glossed-up version of Ford's "Frantic," directed by Roman Polanski in 1988.
Frantic most obviously recalls the plots of Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes and The Man Who Knew Too Much, concerning as it does the disappearance of a woman and the scramble to find her.
Frantic most obviously recalls the plots of Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes and The Man Who Knew Too Much, concerning as it does the disappearance of a woman and the scramble to find her.
Take the Parisian American kidnapping plot of Roman Polanski's "Frantic" and cross with the father-spiralling-into-the repulsive-world-of-the-porn-industry of Paul Schrader's "Hardcore" then add a dash of "Bodyguard" and Luc Besson's penchant for carrying things way over the top and you've got "Taken," a film that impresses if for nothing else but the way it compelling turns the fifty-six Liam Neeson into an action star.
Something like Frantic , in fact, the 1988 movie in which Ford's character rousts Paris in search of his kidnapped wife.
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If this movie had been released a year ago, it would likely have been received as Polanski's best work since "The Pianist," and his best shot at an international commercial success since at least "Frantic" in 1988.
This effort joins the director's Frantic in the "jet-lag" category where mind and body can never quite catch up with a new, deeply problematic – and probably dangerous – environment.
It’s a Hitchcockian sort of setup, but one also like those in “Chinatown” and “Frantic,” with a confused man who thinks he knows things realizing gradually how much bigger and graver his situation is than he first suspected: the proverbial man who knew too little and too much at once.
This political thriller is a return to the more straightforward genre filmmaking that director Roman Polanski has previously indulged in with successful films like Frantic and less successful films such as The Ninth Gate.
The Ghost Writer marks a return to form—not Chinatown class (what would be?), but a much more satisfying thriller than Frantic or The Ninth Gate.
Seigner (aka Mrs. Roman Polanski), whom you might recognize from Polanski's Bitter Moon and Frantic , is starting to lose her credibility as a sex goddess, I will note.
And the presence of Polanski's wife Emmanuelle Seigner as the mysterious, ass-kicking woman who joins Corso (she's like Lara Croft thrown into the middle of Angel Heart) just makes the movie feel like a creepier version of Polanski's Frantic (also starring Seigner).
Frank Langella ("Small Soldiers," "Dracula"), playing the Christopher Lee type demonologist/book collector, is too one-dimensional to raise any doubts about his ultimate intentions, while neither Lena Olin ("Mystery Men," "Polish Wedding") nor Emmanuelle Seigner ("Nirvana," "Frantic") manage to maintain any audience interest in their characters once the story bogs down into complacency.
In the process, Polanski gets a workout in pacing and narrative convolutions he hasn't had since 1986's "Frantic."
In addition, Lena Olin (Mr. Jones) and Emmanuelle Seigner (Frantic) smolder as sexy objects of suspicion.
The dread that pervades, say, Chinatown, or even the uneven Frantic, which is almost intolerably anxiety-provoking for its first, seemingly uneventful half-hour or so, goes beyond pulpishness into richer realms of unease.