Alive
All actors and roles (10)
Short description
Alive is a survival drama based on the true story of a Uruguayan rugby team whose flight from Montevideo to Santiago crashed in the Andes in October 1972. A number of passengers died in the impact, and the survivors, stranded on a remote snow-covered plateau far from any search route, waited in vain for rescue. With food and water gone and temperatures below freezing, they resorted to eating the flesh of those who had died, and eventually three of the strongest men set out across the mountains to find help.
Frank Marshall directed the film, his second feature after Arachnophobia in 1990, from a screenplay by John Patrick Shanley. Kathleen Kennedy and Robert Watts produced it for Paramount, Touchstone Pictures, The Kennedy/Marshall Company and Film Andes S.A., with a budget reported at 32 million dollars and a worldwide gross of about 37 million. The cast includes Ethan Hawke as Nando Parrado, Josh Hamilton as Roberto Canessa, Vincent Spano as Antonio Balbi, Bruce Ramsay as Carlitos Páez, John Newton as Antonio Vizintín and David Kriegel as Gustavo Zerbino, among roughly forty credited performers.
On IMDb the film holds 7.1 out of 10 from around 69,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.9 out of 10 from roughly 1,600 votes. A critics' score of 6.2 out of 10 from 30 reviews places it slightly below the audience ratings.
What's left behind the scenes
- The real plane crashed on Friday, October 13, 1972.
- The real Nando Parrado (played by Ethan Hawke) was invited as a consultant.
- The names of the deceased were changed, with the exception of the names of Nando Parrado’s mother and sister, and the wife of Javier Methol.
- The film's script was developed as early as 1981.
- The crash scene was filmed over 9 days.
- Most of the film crew took motion sickness pills due to the long stay in the mountains.
- The main filming location was the Canadian ski town of Panorama.
- It took 5 helicopters to transport the entire film crew (150 people) to the filming location each morning.
- John Malkovich played the role of Carlitos Paez (his name is not listed in the credits), and interestingly, all the lines were written by the real Carlitos Paez specifically for the film.
- At the end of the film, 17 people remain alive, however, in reality, only 16 people survived.
- To make the scene of eating the deceased more realistic, the actors did not eat for two days beforehand. In this scene, the actors actually ate raw turkey.
- The film is based on Piers Paul Read's book "Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors" (1974), which is based on real events.
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