Frantic
Director: Roman Polanski
Year Released: 1988
Rating: 1.5
"Frantic" is almost a gross misnomer - despite being about a husband on the search for his kidnapped wife, the pacing is slow and Polanski's almost completely content with letting the sweat from Harrison Ford's face tell the whole story. The last half-hour is just messy, with plot contrivances (to 'stretch' the action out, I suppose) mounting to no end; the picture's metaphors seem vaguely parallel to Polanski's own (troubled) life: wife "stolen" from him, trapped in France (Polanski can't even go to England), thinking everyone's against him, 'by chance' finding himself arm-in-arm with a much younger girl (women comment on the association negatively while male peers give a wink-and-a-nod approval) all as a result of being in exile from a cheap, breakable America, which is supposed to be a symbol of 'liberty.' My reading may be more interesting than the movie itself, which is, like most of his post-Tenant work, insubstantial.
