Alive

1993

Director: Frank Marshall

Cast: Ethan Hawke, Vincent Spano and Josh Hamilton

Plot: Uruguayan rugby team stranded in the snow swept Andes are forced to use desperate measures to survive after a plane crash.

Mr. Moneybags had never seen Alive, so I was excited when I saw he had obtained it. I still remember the shocking and mind-boggling experience of watching it when I was young and I was curious to see how the actual movie held up to my memory of it. But then Mr. Moneybags was real reluctant to watch it, fearing it may be too dark and disturbing, especially since its based on a true story. So one night when he wasn't looking I just turned it on anyway. The thing I was most eager to see was the depiction of the plane crash, when the tail gets ripped off in mid flight and whole rows of people get sucked out of the plane and into snowy oblivion. Although I was probably 10 or 11 when I last saw Alive, I clearly remember this scene scaring the shit out of me, and thinking I would never fly in a plane. Upon rewatching this scene I was not disappointed, and it likely made an impression because the movie cuts right to the chase and the crash happens within the first 10 or 15 minutes. This is appreciated since its still a major epic of a movie, going just over the two hour mark, but feeling closer to three. Obviously if they were remaking the movie today some better special effects would be employed for the big crash scene, but the effects were realistic enough that they did not distract from the sheer terror depicted. It remains on of the most horrifying experiences I can imagine, suddenly the back half of the plane is gone and you are just sitting there wondering if your seat is going to be the next one ripped out, into the Andes no less.

The rest of the movies was slightly better than I expected it to be, but I wonder how much of that is due to it just being a really great story. It certainly isn't due to the acting ability of Ethan Hawke, who's ooey gooey stoic cuteness wasn't even that charming at this age. I think it is exactly that real event aspect that makes me wonder what it would have been like to be in the plane, and keeps me engaged throughout the movie. Because of this, it seems more gorey than you'd imagine when the survivors start discussing cannibalism of their dead to stay alive. The second great scene of the movie is when they finally take the plunge and carve into one of the bodies on the ice. Its depicted so realistically, they aren't butchers, it isn't a nice piece of meat, they literally claw at the frozen human flesh with their hands, demoralizing enough and then they've got to eat it!

Besides the downside that is Ethan Hawke, I didn't remember quite so much "faith" and "god" stuff. I get that extreme situations bring out these aspects in people, and that maybe all of the real people were quite religious and that helped get them through, but it feels a bit heavy handed here, not quite on a Shyamalan level, but approaching it. However, considering Frank Marshall's other big directing projects were Arachnaphobia and Congo, Alive is clearly his standout film, and not just because it doesn't ridiculously exaggerate the predatory nature of a random animal. It can be praised for its simple achievement of taking an unbelievable but true event and depicting it in a realistic and compelling way, so that by the end of the film there is no way we don't feel that triumph with the rest of the survivors.

SIDENOTE (w/ spoiler): I was disappointed to learn that the final scene with these iconic men hugging and smiling was one of the few misrepresentations of the real story. The real survivors had heard on the radio that their compadres had made it to Chile and even put on their cleanest clothes for the rescue choppers.