Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
The amazing true story of a Uruguayan rugby team's plane that crashed in the middle of the Andes mountains, and their immense will to survive and pull through alive, forced to do anything and everything they could to stay alive on meager rations and through the freezing cold.
Alive dramatizes one of the most extraordinary real-life survival stories ever documented — a Uruguayan rugby team resorting to cannibalism to survive a plane crash in the Andes. The subject matter alone gives the film a striking Novelty: few survival stories carry this moral and physical weight, and the film commits to portraying the desperate reality without sensationalism. The plot is inherently gripping due to the source material, though the screenplay sometimes struggles to sustain tension across the full runtime and can feel episodic. The acting is competent but rarely transcendent — Ethan Hawke anchors things adequately without delivering a career-defining performance, and the ensemble is solid but uneven. Cinematography captures the brutal, isolating beauty of the Andes effectively, though it doesn't push into truly distinctive visual territory. The ending is emotionally satisfying given the real events it depicts, but the film's conclusion can feel somewhat rushed and anticlimactic given the enormity of the ordeal. Overall a respectful, watchable adaptation of an incredible story that leans heavily on its remarkable source material.