Word: polanski
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Harrison Ford goes Frantic in Roman Polanski' s homage to Hitchcock. -- Kathleen Turner niftily anchors Switching Channels...
...Frantic isn't so bad either. As a matter of fact, it more nearly matches that critical cliche than most of the other movies on which the term is carelessly slapped. One can easily imagine Old Master Slyboots going for Roman Polanski's basic premise...
...audience can see her exit as he cannot, and there is something distinctly odd, bad-dreamy about her movement out of frame and, as it happens, out of the normality that Polanski so nicely states in his film's early passages. There is something very human about her husband's -- everybody's -- refusal to admit at first that something unusual must have happened. How desperately we cling to the belief that orderliness is immutable...
...also her character that causes the picture's problems. Polanski and Co-Writer Gerard Brach start by doing too little with her and end by doing too much. They might have exploited the comic possibilities of her dazy nature a little more, especially as the villains grow overtly menacing in their attempts to reclaim their lost luggage. That, though, is a forgivable flaw. The story, too, is busy with other demands that include, refreshingly, a desire to balance the demand for suspense against the need for plausibility. The principals are never tested by situations that require daring or skills beyond...
What is not forgivable is the end to which Michele is maneuvered. It is a glaring, blaring atonality, the only conceivable purpose of which is to help , Polanski prove that he is not a Hitchcockian after all -- more serious, don't you know. But why spoil a perfectly enjoyable, often quite imaginative imitation by insisting on that dubious point...