The Missing - one and-a-half stars
Jace Duval
Issue date: 12/4/03 Section: Features
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When the trailer for Ron Howard's "The Missing" hit theaters, it looked promising. Good actors. A good director. A western with a supernatural twist. However, "The Missing" is missing a lot.
"The Missing" is based on the novel by Thomas Eidson. The book might have been good, but Howard should have thought twice before hiring Ken Kaufman to pen the script, considering his previous accomplishments were "Muppets From Space" and "Space Cowboys."
In "The Missing," Tommy Lee Jones plays Samuel, a man who abandoned his family to live life as an Indian. Maggie (Cate Blanchett) just had her daughter kidnapped by a group of American Indians.
Conveniently, Samuel decides to pop back into her life just as she could use someone who knows the "Indian" way to rescue her daughter.
Couldn't poor Blanchett have found a better movie to do? Jones probably just didn't have anything else to do. He's weathered here. And he's actually quite believable as a man who doesn't belong to the white man's or the Indian's world anymore. He's a sad drifter in search of forgiveness from his daughter.
The film drags from beginning to end. There's some gun play here and some American Indian magic there, but there's wasted time everywhere. Audiences don't have the patience to watch Jones sit in the dirt and look sad every five minutes, especially when the movie runs over two hours.
"The Missing" could have been worse, but it also could have been a whole lot better. Something tells me Howard probably knew this wasn't going to turn out as good as he had hoped. He must have envisioned something better than his final cut. I surely did.
"The Missing" is based on the novel by Thomas Eidson. The book might have been good, but Howard should have thought twice before hiring Ken Kaufman to pen the script, considering his previous accomplishments were "Muppets From Space" and "Space Cowboys."
In "The Missing," Tommy Lee Jones plays Samuel, a man who abandoned his family to live life as an Indian. Maggie (Cate Blanchett) just had her daughter kidnapped by a group of American Indians.
Conveniently, Samuel decides to pop back into her life just as she could use someone who knows the "Indian" way to rescue her daughter.
Couldn't poor Blanchett have found a better movie to do? Jones probably just didn't have anything else to do. He's weathered here. And he's actually quite believable as a man who doesn't belong to the white man's or the Indian's world anymore. He's a sad drifter in search of forgiveness from his daughter.
The film drags from beginning to end. There's some gun play here and some American Indian magic there, but there's wasted time everywhere. Audiences don't have the patience to watch Jones sit in the dirt and look sad every five minutes, especially when the movie runs over two hours.
"The Missing" could have been worse, but it also could have been a whole lot better. Something tells me Howard probably knew this wasn't going to turn out as good as he had hoped. He must have envisioned something better than his final cut. I surely did.