Alive: 20 Years Later (1993)

From up to 72 days to 20 years later

"Alive: 20 Years Later" is a companion documentary piece to the 1993 film "Alive" that fills in some of the gaps of what the movie couldn't slow down to show in a reasonable time frame. This is broken up with spoken English and some dub overs in Spanish, along with a narration courtesy of Martin Sheen. Survivor Nando Parrado speaks a majority of the time, along with some others such as the Strauch relatives as the time progresses.

Twenty years later and a share of the sixteen survivors look back on what was going through their heads and how it has affected them up till the present day of the early '90s. There's behind the scenes shots of the movie "Alive" that show Nando and a few others visiting the set as technical advisors. Actors of the film are only shown from a distance as the focus is more on the real life people. Though there are some brief interviews with the filmmakers in between. The fuselage that was built to recreate the aftermath of their accident is so accurate according to one survivor that it brings back instant memories. They fill in some of the gaps of the 10 day journey through the mountains that also involves the final rescue and knowing that everything was okay at that point. Some black and white photographs are shown in the after with faces buried in beards but smiles of elation emerging from underneath.

Many of the survivors live in the surrounding area as not only to each other but also the ones that didn't make it out. Even though the families are reminded with their presence, they have to be careful with what they say, as it can get around to someone who is trying to forget. Therefore, the bodies that were used or in what order are never disclosed. They speak about some divided views of whether or not it was right that they ate their friends to survive, which was hot on people's minds right afterwards. I mean, "Soylent Green" had a related twist that caused people to reel in their seats just a year later in '73; not to mention that point was only in the script and not in the prior novel. Their priest gives his thoughts of the events, along with some who did the act and how it affected them, or whether they would do it again. There's honesty here with admitting to not being as strong and then others who did more not wanting to be considered heroes. No one wanted to be there but they made the best of it and use it as a growing point to live on. It's an inspirational story that shows how much spirit a group of human beings has. Most of us never had to do even a fraction of what they did, and probably will never have to, so it's something to hold in the back of one's mind as a reminder.

As a definitive documentary, this doesn't capture everything. Though as a piece to give a sampled overview of the events, "Alive: 20 Years Later" works in that regard as it gives out various snippets of information and shows some visuals of the then and now. The behind the scenes of "Alive" are only briefly covered and none of the performers spoke of how the role affected them or how they prepared, nor how it came to be made into a movie again. Also, some sections feel like they're too compacted and succinct to give room for contemplation or to feel the emotional impact. This is told somewhat out of sequence and with some roving thoughts pertaining to the events, which doesn't always make it progress or grow from the outset when it jumps back and forth. This is relatively brief and sometimes to the point in areas like either the filmmakers or the interviewed have somewhere else to be. That or the editor went a little overboard or they had to fill only a select time frame since it clocks in at around 50 minutes. There are still some interesting tidbits that aren't in the "Alive" film, nor "Supervivientes de los Andes/Survive!" from '76 based on the same events.

Rating: 6.5/10

Director: Jill Fullerton-Smith
Link: IMDB

Alive (1993)

Perseverance in the face of an accident

This was based on real events about survival and holding on when an impossible event, that includes friends and loved ones, causes others to make decisions and sacrifices that they would have never done before in their comfortable lives. "Alive" wasn't made to be an action/adventure story in the wilderness but more of a drama that concentrates on the people and the emotional impact of how far they had to go to hang on.

In 1972, a plane carrying a Uruguayan rugby team and other passengers are passing through the Andes mountains for a match in Chile. Everything is fun and games with the world in the palm's of their hands, until they choke up when going through a rough patch of weather. Before everyone knows it, it's the real deal as the vision of the pilots gets blurred by the atmosphere and they clip a mountain top before crashing into the freezing, snow covered terrain. A share of the passengers flew out of the plane before impact and then there are those that are injured or dead when they abruptly stop, luckily without explosion (see Hollywood, not everything is combustible), but still with a wrecking impact of toppled seats and contorted passengers. Various wounds and psychological trauma runs rampant and those that are better off scrounge up supplies till they can get rescued. Communications are out, temperatures drop at night and food is scarce among the remaining at that point who use the somewhat intact fuselage as a shelter.

The captain of the rugby team, Antonio (Vincent Spano), keeps everybody together with a game plan and reassurances, until matters get worse when they think they're going to be rescued and the remaining food is quickly gone through. Roberto (Josh Hamilton), who was attending medical school, acts as stand in doctor after their team physician died, along with his wife. It becomes a test of human will and endurance as the days pass by with little hope in sight but what they make of their pitiful situation. They see how hard it is to trek even a small ways as young and athletic as they are. A man named Nando (Ethan Hawke) isn't taken seriously at first when he boasts that he's going to go out on foot and then eat the flesh of the dead pilots for sustenance because they were the ones that got them in the situation in the first place. Desperation hits with bad news from a hand held radio. Nando tells all his proposition and it's taken mostly with disbelief and derision. "I don't think I could do it. How could we go back to our families?" "You could go back alive. I think they'd prefer that." "...are you ready to go out there and cut flesh from a human body and eat it?" "It's like communion. From their death, we live."

The story and events gradually unfold as you get a feel for the passengers. The simple things are shown as they bide their time with song, prayer and idle talk to stick together as a unit. This comes with some emotional scenes but it didn't seem like they set out to make this a through-and-through tear jerker. There's some humor and other areas where they have to push their feelings aside for the time being if they want to keep going. They first go through a crash, battle starvation and then if that wasn't enough combat acts of nature. A few take a trip to retrieve a battery from the detached tail end to get the radio working to call for an SOS. Though the repair work was harder than it looks and this time they plan out an impossible journey with only makeshift equipment and a desperate hope to get help for the rest who are deteriorating in health and spirit.

Their English at first might seem somewhat formal in areas, but my guess is that they phrased sentences how it would be closer to Spanish. Thus despite U.S. actors, they didn't include any blatant Americanisms in their speech. Still, some parts come off as a little forced and unnatural when trying to convey the array of emotions that the real people felt, but, on the other hand, I'd imagine it's better that the actors performed somewhat unpolished to show spontaneity to the situation rather than going with clipped dialogue delivered from a comfortable movie set. They didn't lose sight of the real events with a distracting amount of poetic license--even though there are some aspects glazed over for the sake of narrative as well as handsome and recognizable actors in place of the real people--it sticks close to what happened. The rescue attempts aren't shown and it's kept focused on the people at hand. The '70s version "Supervivientes de los Andes" used a framing technique to show the government working to find the plane, but it was spaced so far apart to lose its driving power. The after isn't shown beyond a brief but rewarding scene, but, then again, it shows them as a connective group by my guess to not single anyone out as a lone hero--for which Nando in real life says he's not--not to mention this is a means to point a viewer towards another medium and serve as the audio and video introduction.

There are some enthralling shots of the scenery with a landscape that has seen countless days, months, years and seasons, as well as generations of species pass by and still to continue going on well past the mentioned's lifespan. It goes to show that nature can be both beautiful and treacherous, even when people are caught in the middle. It makes no judgments, which gives thought to wonder if it should be studied, feared or awed--probably a combination of all of the above.

Rating: 7.5/10

Director: Frank Marshall (Arachnophobia)
Stars: Ethan Hawke, Vincent Spano, Josh Hamilton
Link: IMDB

The Untold Story (1993)

Brutal, yet goofy

This movie truly has an odd atmosphere with cheesy stock synthesizer music, mixed with goofy humor and then to contradict all that it includes brutal murder, sneaky cannibalism and a vicious rape. This opens up with a man getting his head smashed against a wall and burned alive from a heated gambling feud. The perpetrator changes his name and appearance and heads from Hong Kong to Macau. Fast forward eight years later to 1986, at the shore of a beach where severed arms and legs are found and detectives are called in to investigate. The film uses a framing technique that has a different tone on both sides, where you get to see somewhat silly plain clothes detectives fumbling around with evidence as if it's their first day on the job, and then on the other side the character Wong Chi Hang (Anthony Wong) seems like a dead-serious, manipulative and disturbing person that runs the Eight Immortals Restaurant. He cheats at gambling, tries to get a lawyer to break the law and then kills a worker on a whim for spreading rumors about him--a real class act. Since they don't waste anything in China, why should a killer, too? He starts to chop up the body and make barbeque "pork" buns with human meat as the secret ingredient for the patrons at the restaurant. "Hey fatso! You like the barbeque buns?" Wong asks a customer who responds back with glee: "Delicious! I can't stop eating them."

About the only technical crime work the cops do is get a clue from fingerprints from the severed arm at the beach that leads them to the restaurant. Unlike all these CSI type shows on TV in the modern day, this isn't going to be heavily or even moderately researched at that on the crime aspect. Wong worked at the restaurant prior and then apparently took it over by buying out the previous owner Cheng Lam. Currently a fearful woman has worked there for only two months and just thinks of him as a nasty boss. The head inspector isn't completely fooled by the charming man on the surface who feeds the rest of the detectives with his special barbeque buns. They stake him out and wait for a suspicious move. Soon enough he throws out evidence and they're on him just before he tries to flee. The latter half takes place in a prison and then a hospital where Wong gets beaten by inmates and then cops. Now, I'm not sure if there's a rivalry going on with the providences of Macau and Hong Kong, figuring this takes place in Macau but was financed and mostly shot in the HK. Similar to every other time a Japanese guy is in a Chinese film he's made to be entirely cruel or inferior. It seems a little past the point of poetic license as the supposed good guys here, being the Macau police, are made to be almost clueless at times, with not wanting to do their job at first, mistreating female coworkers to the point of harassment, the lead inspector taking credit for his underlings as well as being loose with prostitute-like dressed woman that he brings to work, and then instead of finding real clues they use brute tactics and manipulation to get him to confess.

Like some other Hong Kong films, "Untold Story"--aka "Human Pork Chop"--doesn't always stick to its genre type or smoothly blend the multiple tones together, so there might be some misplaced humor to an unaccustomed westerner. It's been like that since the day and age of chop socky, where a serious and violent duel will take place and the very next scene will be a slapstick one. With "Untold Story," it's hard to tell if you should be light heartedly laughing or afraid, or both at the same time. The tone is really that up in the air, and it seems that both directors had a different way they wanted to make it and compromised with both ways at once. Though what makes the experience different than the usual crime fare is you're not always sure who to root for. The bad guy is someone you'd never want to meet in person but yet you can't keep your eyes off of what he'll do next, even if it involves innocent people getting killed--give us more!

The cops aren't done a service here and are essentially written to lighten the load. They also fall kind of short on keeping the mystery and crime angle intriguing. Anthony Wong plays Mr. Wong with a totally changed persona if you've seen some of his other films. He portrays a degenerate who leeches off of other people in the most extreme sense and they make him entirely creepy while at it. When this movie gets down to the dirty stuff, it does deliver, whether it be with a cruel rape scene that doesn't involve the usual penetration but still the humiliation, to not hesitating when killing little children with blood spray to show for it. I remember first seeing this back on a grainy VHS tape, which made it even more sordid. Though the scenes with carnage are the main things that got seared into my head. When I picked it up on DVD and started to pay attention, some of the other things going on here aren't that memorable and as a result it's not something that thoroughly flows in the most gravitating order it could have when it comes to replay value. First time around: remembered for being horrific and unsettling. After that: you'll wish there was more to it on all fronts.

Rating: 6/10

Director: Danny Lee, Herman Yau
Stars: Anthony Wong, Danny Lee, Emily Kwan, Fui-On Shing
Link: IMDB