(Some Spoilers) The movie "Frantic" slowly gets you to like it. It takes it's audience from a simple case of suitcases being innocently switched at the airport to an nail-biting off camera kidnapping. Then to a tour through the Paris underworld and nightlife to finally a confrontation with this mysterious Mid-East terrorist organization. The terror group is dealing with the smuggling of top-secret US government nuclear trigger mechanisms that, if in the wrong hands, can vaporise entire cities.

American Doctor Richard Walker, Harrison Ford, and his wife Sondra, Betty Buckley, arrive from San Francisco at the Grand Hotel in Paris for a doctors convention where Dr. Walker is to be the featured speaker. Finding that his luggage had been switched at the airport Walker calls TWA Airline giving them all the information including the switched luggage ticket number. With her husband taking a shower Sondra is seen answering the door and then disappears out of sight and out of the movie.

It takes a while for Walker, who thought that his wife went out shopping, to realize that something is terribly wrong when Sandra doesn't show up and goes to the hotel lobby to find out what happened to her. Walker is later told by the desk clerk that Sandra left the hotel together with a Arabic-looking man.

Walker frantic that his wife was kidnapped goes to the local police only to be told that she may be cheating on him, it's something that seems to be very common among married couples in the city. Even the US embassy doesn't seem at all too concerned or caring about his wife's disappearance. That has a desperate and determined Walker go out on his own to track down where she is, alive or dead, and who's responsible for her disappearance.

Opening up the switched luggage Walker finds a pack of matches from the Blue Parrot nightclub and the name and telephone number of a person named Dede on it. Walker also inadvertently finds the hidden nuclear trigger that he at first thinks is a ***SPOILER*** toy model of the Statue of Liberty. Finding out at the Blue Parrort that Dede is a drug dealer Walker goes to his apartment in the seedy side of the city only to find Dede, Doll Boyer, brutally murdered. Waiting in the hallway Walker sees this young woman Michelle, Emmanuell Seigner, enter Dede's pad and grabs her trying to find out what Dede and herself had to do with his wife's Sandra's disappearance. To Walker's surprise he finds that Michelle, after a bit of convincing on his part, was the person who's luggage she mistakenly has and that she's also some kind of illegal courier for a local Paris drug gang.

You and both Walker and Michelle at first think that there's illegal drugs involved with,or in, the luggage that Walker mistakenly received at the Paris Airport. As the real truth slowly and shockingly comes out with the Arab terrorists gang Israeli Mossad and now even the US embassy getting into the mix it becomes more and more evident that there's something far more serious and explosive in that misplaced suitcase. there's also the fact that if the suitcase is ever gotten into the wrong hands it can lead to a nuclear holocaust.

It takes a while for "Frantic" to unravel it's storyline, like most good thrillers do, but it's actor Harrison Ford who makes it come alive with his frantic and almost hysterical search for his missing and kidnapped wife Sondra. As he goes together with, an at first very reluctant, Michelle through the length and breath of the city to finally get his wife's kidnappers to release her. This only after a deadly shootout between the kidnappers and the perusing Mossad agents. Which lead to the precious and deadly triggering device to plant itself at the bottom of Paris' Seine River, where it could do no harm to anyone, courtesy of Dr. Richard Walker.

I've been a fan of Roman Polanski purely on the strength of THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH, which I think is an outstanding horror that brings a Shakespeare play to life in a way that few others can. Since then, other films I've seen of his have either impressed me (ROSEMARY'S BABY, THE NINTH GATE),left me indifferent (THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS) or feel overrated (REPULSION). None of them have equalled MACBETH, at least not until now: FRANTIC has become my favourite Polanski film as one of my favourite films of all time.

I read the one-line synopsis: guy loses his wife in Paris, struggles to find out what happened to her. I had no idea of what kind of film Polanski would make from the story. Would it be an action-focused narrative, like TAKEN? Would it be a taut psychological drama or a suspenseful conspiracy flick? The answer is all of those and more besides: Frantic turns out to be a Hitchcockian thriller, with Harrison Ford giving his career-best turn as the wronged man, out of his depth and on his own, fighting back against a hostile world.

With Hitchcock, there always had to be a blonde, and Polanski doesn't disappoint in this respect: he casts Emmanuelle Seigner as Michelle, the streetwise young girl who finds herself caught up in the search for the missing spouse. If Ford is the straight man, then Seigner is the mystery woman; she's part of an alien society and supplies plenty of allure along the way. Really, it's a phenomenal performance that feels distinctly artistic and European in an otherwise Hollywood-influenced movie.

The suspense and mystery deepen as the film progresses, all building to a climax that never disappoints. Along the way, there's plenty of mileage from the fish-out-of-water premise and also a surprising amount of humour, given the film's storyline. The rooftop sequence, in which an unlucky Ford finds himself at the mercy of both gravity and shoes without treads, is a real highlight and laugh-out-loud moment. Tremendously achieve, as is the rest of the movie: a real winner, this.

Dr. Richard Walker (Harrison Ford) is in Paris with his wife Sondra (Betty Buckley) for a medical conference. The last time was their honeymoon 20 years ago. They check into the hotel and discover that they've got the wrong bag. While he's in the shower, his wife gets a call and disappears. It's a struggle to be taken seriously even after he finds her broken bracelet. It seems like she's run off with some guy. He finds a phone number written on a matchbook in the incorrect suitcase. He starts investigating on his own and encounters Michelle (Emmanuelle Seigner).

This is a great Roman Polanski film. It has the Hitchcockian feel. It's an everyman played very well by Ford who is caught up in a world that he has no concept of. The start is Kafkaesque. It's filled with paranoia. Then Emmanuelle Seigner shows up. She's a classic femme fatale. The movie is a great thriller.