The Missing
Directed by:
Ron HowardScreenplay:
Ken KaufmanCinematography:
Salvatore TotinoComposer:
James HornerCast:
Tommy Lee Jones, Cate Blanchett, Eric Schweig, Evan Rachel Wood, Jenna Boyd, Steve Reevis, Ray McKinnon, Val Kilmer, Aaron Eckhart, Simon Baker, Jay Tavare (more)Plots(1)
Cate Blanchett is Maggie, a young woman raising her daughters in the desolate wilderness of New Mexico. When daughter Lily is snatched by a dark-hooded phantom with shape-shifting powers, Maggie's long-estranged father Oscar(r)-winner Tommy Lee Jones appears suddenly, offering help. Though stunned by his return, Maggie knows she must swallow both pride if she is ever to see Lily again. Unaware of the frightening events that lurk in the distance, father and daughter set out to track down the fiend that took Lily. But lying in wait is horror so unspeakable it will change them forever! (Shock Entertainment)
(more)Reviews (2)
The Missing is not a bad film at all. The suspense works perfectly and the bad guys are truly nasty. Some of the scenes go overboard with their cruelty. Cate Blanchett is great from the first moment, Tommy Lee Jones as a long-haired Indian takes some getting used to at first, but you soon come to believe him and feel fine with him. Truly beautiful cinematography, dynamic action scenes, and very nice music by James Horner. The film’s weakness lies in the seriously intended yet comical shamanic scenes (the resurrection of the possessed Cate), as well as in the intermingling of the action-thriller and psychological levels, where the daughter gradually finds her way to her long-lost father. The closer the film gets to the climax and the more we long for the bad guys to be eliminated and the happy ending to come, the more we are denied this moment of redemption, and the pace is slowed by the quiet father/daughter passages. The film thus fails to build and often seems to drag. It would have been better if the subject matter had been conceived strictly as a western thriller.
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Tommy Lee Jones and Cate Blanchett are great, and the film could have been too if it hadn't been so unreasonably long (I can't imagine the director's cut being twenty minutes longer) and, above all, so boring at times. It's not that I don't mind that there's no shooting in a western, not at all. But in short, well, it dragged on a bit too much during the final three-quarters of an hour, nothing surprised me... And the final confrontation wasn't much either. From time to time I thought of The Stalking Moon with Gregory Peck, which The Missing can only look up to in admiration.
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