Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
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.
Frantic is a solid Polanski thriller that leans heavily on its Parisian atmosphere and Harrison Ford's fish-out-of-water tension. The cinematography is genuinely exceptional — Witold Sobocinski's work captures Paris as both glamorous and menacing, making the city itself a character. The plot is competent genre work, building dread effectively in the first half before losing momentum in a somewhat formulaic espionage reveal. Ford is reliably good as the increasingly desperate doctor, and Emmanuelle Seigner brings an enigmatic energy, though neither performance reaches transcendent heights. Novelty is moderate — the premise of a foreigner lost in bureaucratic indifference has Kafkaesque appeal, but the film doesn't push far beyond its neo-noir conventions. The ending is the weakest link: it resolves abruptly and unsatisfyingly, undercutting the tension Polanski carefully built, leaving audiences with a deflated rather than cathartic conclusion.