Alive (1993)

Powerful

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

A lot of unfair and plainly wrong assumptions from critics. Fact: these were handsome, strong atheltes. Tough from playing rugby..very religious, but also part of uruguay's upper class. The actors are caucasion, but that's who uruguayans are.,decscendents of german, spanish and italian.,very caucasian., very european., However, as is often the case,, the two books " alive: miracle in the andes" and nando's book are far better., Still, this movie touches on survival, heroes, perservarence, indominatble spirit and a connection with god., I would have liked to gsve grown up with and been friends with these guys. I have nothing but admiration for them amd have zero problems with what they did to survive.,no matter how controversial, it was the right call to make and i would have done the same thing. Most of us would. That should not be the story here. It was their heroism and faith in god that is the real story.,

A good survival film that's not as harrowing as a more exploitative film would have been. It's an interesting approach in that it cares less about the suffering of the people and more about the humanity and beauty found in the situation. In that way it can also be corny and by underselling the more painful moments it leads to less uplift later.The opening plane crash scene is still something to behold. All the interiors seemed to me to be practical effects and they looked great (exteriors were a CGI plane). I'm sure there are some who will say it hasn't aged well but that's only because what they're seeing isn't over- edited or shiny and everything is tangible and comprehensible which might be confusing, I guess, to some.

Alive is an immensely horrific true story that had the potential to become an amazing film. This film is not that amazing film. It does alright, its good but could have been told in a different, and in my opinion, a much better way.The acting was a balance, it was good at times but terrible at other points, lines were delivered rather unenthusiastically or annoyingly overly dramatic by many, but there is also some good acting thrown in, most notably from Ethan Hawke who luckily becomes stronger and more involved as the film proceeds.The way in which the cannibalism issue was handled was impressive, and I would suspect was also realistic. The first time is obviously the worst, morals are questioned as the team make what is a very, very difficult choice to make that was conveyed extremely well in this film. But after the first time it becomes much easier and even casual to some characters which I would believe to be true.My problem with this film was it's tone. The story is about a group of friends and relatives whose plane crashes, killing some while the extreme weather conditions of the Andes slowly kills the others, and how the survivors had to resort to eating their loved ones to stay alive. This is a very dark, disturbing and traumatic true event and I was hoping would spawn a similarly gritty drama that I feel would have more accurately reflected the experience of the rugby team. I found this film to contain a large amount of 90's cheese and to find Disney in the credits probably explains that. The tone and story didn't go together at all, the cheesy film of a nightmarish event is the on screen equivalent of mixing oil with water in my opinion.Overall Alive is an alright film, it tells the story quite well it just has the wrong tone and feel for the most part. I would be very interested to see this film remade, as it is a tremendous event and I believe given a much darker tone, could give life to the film that I believe this true story deserves.

I read some of the reviews by the people who didn't like this movie. Some people think they know everything and one reviewer actually stated he wished the all died. I just shake my head. I could never imagine the pain and suffering these people went through. How traumatic it must have been to just survive the crash but then survive in those conditions. This movie tries to tie in a lot into 2 hours. Most people just associate the crash because of what occurred after it being the eating of human flesh. What would any of us have done to survive? Had this movie been made now it probably would be more graphic and intense which is what people are looking for. To me, this was fine the way it was done. Just remember, when you watch this, you have understand this movie is telling a big story in a short time. I'm sure there were a lot of other things that could have been told.