Frantic is a 1988 American-French neo-noir mystery thriller film directed by Roman Polanski and starring Harrison Ford and Emmanuelle Seigner. The film score is by Ennio Morricone.

Plot

Dr. Richard Walker (Harrison Ford) is 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 picked up the wrong one at the airport. While Walker is taking a shower, Sondra receives a phone call that Walker can t hear and she mysteriously disappears from their hotel room.

Still jet-lagged, Walker searches for his wife in the hotel with the help of a polite but mostly indifferent staff and then wanders outside to look for her himself. A wino overhears him in a café and says he saw Sondra being forced into a car in a nearby alley. Walker is skeptical, until he finds his wife s ID bracelet on the cobblestones. He contacts the Paris police and the U.S. Embassy, but their responses are bureaucratic, and there is little hope anyone will bother looking for her. As Walker carries on the search himself he stumbles onto a murder site where he encounters the streetwise young Michelle, who mistook Sondra s suitcase for her own at the airport. He realises that Michelle is a career drug smuggler, but does not care or know for which shady dealers she is hired. Michelle reluctantly helps Walker in his attempt to learn what was packed in her switched suitcase, and how to trade the contents for the return of his kidnapped wife.

Following their visit to Michelle s apartment, Walker s hotel room and shabby cabarets, it turns out that the smuggled contents are not drugs, but a krytron, an electronic switch used as a detonator for nuclear weapons, stolen and smuggled inside a souvenir replica of the Statue of Liberty, on orders of some Arab country s agents. The American embassy, working with Israeli agents, wants to get hold of the precious device, and they have no problem letting Sondra die for it. In order to save his wife, Walker joins forces with Michelle, who is only interested in getting her paycheck.

The film ends with a confrontation on the Île aux Cygnes, in the middle of the Seine, next to the Paris Statue of Liberty replica there, where Sondra is to be released in exchange for the krytron. However, a gunfight ensues between the Arab agents who were to get the precious device, and the Israeli Mossad secret agents who traced them to get hold of it. The Arabs are killed in the crossfire but Michelle is hit too, dying soon after having slipped the krytron into Walker s pocket, with Sondra at their side. Furious, Walker shows the krytron device to the Israeli agents, just to throw it into the Seine. He carries Michelle s body away, ready to leave Paris with his wife.

Cast

• Harrison Ford as Dr. Richard Walker
• Emmanuelle Seigner as Michelle
• Betty Buckley as Sondra Walker
• Gérard Klein as Gaillard
• Jacques Ciron as The Hotel Manager
• Dominique Pinon as Wino
• Yves Rénier as The French Inspector
• Robert M. Ground as The Former Cop
• John Mahoney as Embassy Official Williams
• Jimmie Ray Weeks as Embassy Security Chief Shaap
• Thomas M. Pollard as The Pusher
• Marcel Bluwal as The Senior Interrogator
• Patrick Floersheim as The Hot-Tempered Interrogator
• Yorgo Voyagis as The Kidnapper
• David Huddleston as Peter
• Alexandra Stewart as Edie
• Artus de Penguern as Waiter
• Roman Polanski as Cabbie with Matchbook

Production

Filming

Filming took place on location in Paris with exteriors filmed outside Le Grand Hotel in rue Scribe in the 9th arrondissement. The hotel s lobby also appeared in the film. Filming also took place at the Île aux Cygnes island in the Seine for the Lady Liberty scenes.

Release

Frantic was released in the UK on 16 February 1988, with a release of 26 February in the US and a 30 March release in France. Also was released on DVD Juny 01, 2004 in Region 1.

Reception

Box office

The film was a disappointment at the box office with a domestic gross of $17,637,950, failing to recoup its production budget. However, the film was more successful in other countries such as France where it received 1,293,721 admissions.

Critical reception

Although a commercial failure in the US, Frantic was a critical success. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 76% of critics gave positive reviews based on a sample of 42 reviews with an average rating of 6.4/10. The site s consensus simply calls it A tense, on-point thriller in the vein of Polanski s earlier work . Metacritic calculated an average score of 66 out of 100 based on 16 reviews, indicating generally favorable reviews . Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of B- on an A+ to F scale.

The film received two thumbs up from Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert on their television programme Siskel & Ebert and The Movies. Pat Collins of WWOR-TV called it Polanski s best film ever . Desson Howe, of The Washington Post, called the movie vintage Polanski , with its relentless paranoia, irony, diffident strangers and nutty cameos. British film magazine Empire rated the movie three out five, calling it Polanski s most satisfying film since Chinatown, and one of the best traditional thrillers to come down the pike in quite some time. Roger Ebert, in his review, gave the movie three stars, saying: to watch the opening sequences of Frantic is to be reminded of Polanski s talent. Here is one of the few modern masters of the thriller and the film noir. Frantic is a reminder of how absorbing a good thriller can be.

Year	1988
ReleaseDate	1988-02-26
RuntimeMins	120
RuntimeStr	2h
Plot	In a hotel room in Paris, a doctor comes out of the shower and finds that his wife has disappeared. He soon finds himself caught up in a world of intrigue, espionage, gangsters, drugs and murder.
Directors	Roman Polanski
Writers	Roman Polanski, Gérard Brach, Robert Towne
Stars	Harrison Ford, Betty Buckley, Emmanuelle Seigner
Produced by	Tim Hampton, Thom Mount
Music by	Ennio Morricone
Cinematography by	Witold Sobocinski
Film Editing by	Sam O Steen
Production Design by	Pierre Guffroy
Costume Design by	Anthony Powell
Makeup Department	Jean-Max Guérin, Sophie Harvey, Didier Lavergne
Production Management	Claude Albouze, Daniel Szuster, Jean-Yves Asselin
Second Unit Director or Assistant Director	Yves Baignères, Mishka Cheyko, Michel Ferry, Yannick Rolandeau
Art Department	Jean-François Cousson, Alain Guyard, Roland Jacob, Gérard James, Alain Laude, Marcel Laude, René Loubet, Félix Placenti, Albert Rajau, Gérard Viard, Jean-Yves Rabier
Sound Department	Jean-François Auger, Roberto Garzelli, Jean Goudier, Dean Humphreys, Matthieu Imbert, Jean-Pierre Lelong, Denis Martin, Eric Mauer, Martine Mory, Laurent Quaglio, Jean-Pierre Ruh, Jim Shields
Visual Effects by	Frederic Moreau
Stunts	Vic Armstrong, Daniel Breton, Rémy Julienne, Wendy Leech, Vic Armstrong
Camera and Electrical Department	Florent Bazin, François Duhamel, Marcel Gellier, Jean Harnois, Marc Koninckx, François Lauliac, Pascal Lebègue, Yvon Sausseau, Isabelle Scala, Jacques Touillaud, Jérôme Touillaud
Casting Department	Marie-Sylvie Caillierez, Margot Capelier, Luc Etienne, Bonnie Timmermann
Costume and Wardrobe Department	Julie Faraday, Laurence Guindollet, Framboise Maréchal, Bernard Minne, Germinal Rangel
Editorial Department	Denis Coq, Glenn Cunningham, Yvan Lucas, Nadja Sassi
Location Management	Olivier Thaon
Music Department	Suki Buchman, Nanni Civitenga, Enrico DeMelis, Sergio Marcotulli, Ennio Morricone, Suzana Peric, Giovanni Santucci, Mike Deasy
Script and Continuity Department	Sylvette Baudrot
Additional Crew	Monique Albouze, Marie-Odile Bertot, Claude Challe, Isabelle Dassonville, Quinn Donoghue, Todd Gallagher, Brian Gibbs, Derf La Chapelle, Hoang Le Van, Marie McFerran, Françoise Piraud, Catherine Riviere, Louise Vincent, Paul Witz, Lisa M. Lewis
Genres	Crime, Drama, Mystery
Companies	Warner Bros., The Mount Company (II)
Countries	France, USA
Languages	English, French
ContentRating	R
ImDbRating	6.9
ImDbRatingVotes	54515
MetacriticRating	66
Keywords	hotel room,espionage,american in paris,husband wife relationship,paris france