‘Alive’ By Desson Howe Washington Post Staff Writer January 15, 1993

Director: Frank Marshall Cast: Ethan Hawke; Vincent Spano; Josh Hamilton; Brucy Ramsay Under 17 restricted Compare prices for this movie Find local video stores More movie shopping Save money with NextCard Visa

In one of the unlikeliest teamings of cast and subject matter, "Alive" puts Hawke, Spano and one-dimensional others into an unrelenting story of macabre survival. And this gruesome tale is from the studio that gave you "Bambi."

Perhaps you recall the tragic event of October 1972, in which a plane carrying a rugby team (45 passengers in all) from Uruguay to Chile crashed in the frozen Andes Mountains. Given up for dead by the Uruguayan government, the crash survivors, many severely injured, spent 72 days trying to stay alive. With little food, they were forced to consume the flesh of their dead (and snow-preserved) fellow passengers. Sixteen survivors were rescued that December.

The movie, adapted from Piers Paul Read's bestseller, re-creates those grim events. Actually, it recasts them in half-baked Hollywood values.

"Alive" doesn't avoid the ickier aspects of the ordeal; you will see some graphic acts of cannibalism. But it turns everything into an uplifting, rah-rah paean to the human spirit. They were given up for dead, they ate their own and they were triumphant!

Inexplicably scripted by John Patrick Shanley (who wrote "Moonstruck"), nothing transcends the material. It's business as usual. At the beginning, for instance, we meet everyone cameo-style in the familiar manner of the disaster movie. Instead of the requisite singing nun, the stalwart stewardess, the girl who needs an organ transplant and the pilot with a drinking problem, we have a jocular rugby team. How those heedless "Uruguayans" joke! How they toss that rugby ball around!

Then the crash happens, a spectacularly staged event in which the wings and tail section are sheared off before the body of the plane crash-slides through the snowy terrain. The shocked and injured unfortunates arrange themselves into a new pecking order of the strong-willed and the weak.

Spano, the team captain, asserts control. Medical student Josh Hamilton helps out where he can. The ones with broken legs stoically await medical assistance. But hopes of early rescue become remote, food supplies dwindle and the weaker start to die off. The issue of cannibalism becomes inevitable. Yet, beyond that, survival is still not assured. The group increasingly turns to spiritual resources.

Finally, it's down to the strongest, who must trek across the forbidding peaks and crevasses, in search of either civilization or soaring movie music.

In the manner of the TV docudrama, you can overlook the dramatic shortcomings to get the basic story. It's the allure of real history behind the movie that keeps you watching. But in this touching story of boy toys helping boy toys, it's almost impossible to root for characters who are dead in the first place.

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