The Missing

Not a director who knows too much about subtlety, Ron Howard turns his Oscar baiting attentions towards that most American of genres, the western, with this flawed but watchable excursion. Something of a riff on John Ford's masterpiece, 'The Searchers' (1956), 'The Missing' sees Cate Blanchett roughing it as Maggie, a formidable frontier woman and the single mother of two young girls. Her father, Samuel Jones (Tommy Lee Jones) suffered something of breakdown years before and went to live with the Apaches, abandoning his family in the process. Soon after he makes a half-hearted attempt to reconcile himself with his daughter and her two kids, Lilly (Evan Rachel Wood) and Dot (Jenna Boyd), the precocious Lilly is kidnapped by a bunch of mean Apaches who are going to sell her into slavery as soon as they reach Mexico. Thus, it's up to Maggie and her tracker father pursue Lilly's captors before she disappears forever.

It's a dangerous business working off a premise which is so closely connected to a stone cold classic. The best scenes of 'The Missing' have nothing to do with the chase, which makes up the bulk of the narrative. Howard initially and skilfully deals with the accusations and stubbornness at the heart of the Maggie/Samuel relationship, giving the film a sense of balance and moral purpose. Unfortunately the director soon overplays his hand - spelling everything out to the audience because he seems to think we are incapable of reaching our own conclusions. As soon as the flimsy central tenant is established, 'The Missing' becomes something of a one-trick chase film that never stretches itself or the actors. In a desperate bid to maintain the drama, Howard throws in a quasi-mystical element, but it merely makes 'The Missing' look even more flimsy than it already is. The cinematography's nice though.