Alive (1993) * 1/2

Directed by:  Frank Marshall

Starring:  Ethan Hawke, Vincent Spano, Josh Lucas, Ileana Douglas, Josh Hamilton

A plane carrying the Uruguayan rugby team crashed in the Andes Mountains in October 1972.    The survivors were stranded for ten weeks in the freezing cold with limited food.     As the trailers for Alive depicted at the time of its release, the survivors had to resort to cannibalism when food ran out.     Alive is well made on a technical level, but do we really need a retelling of this story in this fashion?

I recently saw Everest, which was also about people trapped on a mountain battling harsh, freezing conditions.     No one in Everest ate anyone else and there were other subplots to keep it afloat.     We spend the entire time with the survivors in Alive.    There were no scenes involving loved ones awaiting news or the organization of rescue efforts.      We are assaulted with people freezing, getting sick, dying, arguing, fighting, and of course the cannibalism.     It's just not any fun to watch.

There wasn't much talk of Hollywood diversity when Alive was released in 1993.   If there was, there would have been apoplexy at the casting of white actors playing Uruguayans.      Ethan Hawke is a fine actor, but a Nando Parrado (his character's name) he is not.    Same goes with Spano, Hamilton, and others playing people named Roberto, Antonio, etc.     However, Hollywood cares mostly about the bottom line and neither Javier Bardem nor Benicio Del Toro was famous at the time.

Fortunately, the movie doesn't lovingly focus on the cannibalism part.    The ads suggesting it might have brought more curious ticket buyers into the theater, but those with a perverse fascination with it will be disappointed.      Another curious aspect of the film is John Malkovich's narration as one of the survivors.     He doesn't discuss the horror and fear involved, but how being that high up is like being close to God.     Some of the poor folks that died became much closer to God than they would have liked.     It is a bizarre tone.     Malkovich's dialogue sounds like someone who, thinking back on everything, realized that surviving a plane crash and nearly freezing or starving to death wasn't all bad.

Some survivors left the crash site on a quest for help and the survivors were eventually rescued.    But curiously there are no reunion scenes with loved ones or anything else.    Surely, someone missed these people while they were gone.    Didn't anyone in the Uruguayan or South American media cover the crash?    The survivors are rescued and the movie is over once Malkovich waxes spiritual about his experience.    Alive is a movie with tunnel vision.    This is not a good thing.