Missing
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Movie Reviews of Missing
Movie Review: Great film, in spite of bare-bones DVD
Summary: 5 Stars
The film itself stands up remarkably well, with compelling and powerful performances of Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek. Lemmon plays the father, and Spacek the wife, of an American citizen who goes missing during the early days of the military coup in Chile. I think it's one of Lemmon's greatest roles, and the way that his relationship with Spacek evolves is both credible and moving. Director Costa-Gavras makes a political statement that's as powerful as the one he made in his classic film "Z" (another great movie, which received better treatment in its DVD release than "Missing").
The video transfer is adequate, if not state-of-the-art. The image lacks clarity, and the colors seem muted, but this fits the tone of the film. The audio track is mediocre, and I found I had to frequently adjust the volume in order for it to be audible.
The real disappointment with this DVD is the total lack of even the most rudimentary DVD features. There is no menu. You insert the DVD, and the film begins. While there are chapters, there is no chapter listing anywhere, so you must move through them with the DVD's controls, not knowing where you will end up until you get there.
There are no audio options (English mono only), no subtitles, and of course, no special features. Even with the substandard DVD presentation, I still must give this 5 stars, because it's a film that I have always loved and couln't wait for it to appear on DVD. I only paid $8 for the DVD at a local bookstore, so I am not really complaining, but be warned that this DVD gives new meaning to the term "bare bones".
If you're a fan of the movie, you will probably get this while it's available, since it is unlikely that it will re-appear in a special edition. If you have never seen the film, rent it or buy it just to see Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek in outstanding performances.
Movie Review: The Classic Search Theme
Summary: 5 Stars
Yes, Costa-Gavras couldn't help putting his Leftist beliefs into this film, but to dismiss MISSING as mere propaganda for the Left is to miss the entire point of the movie. Beneath the thin political veneer is the classic theme of people searching for a loved one who is lost. There was John Wayne in THE SEARCHERS (nobody called that propaganda against Native Americans). Then there's Hitchcock's THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH where parents search for their kidnapped son. More recently, there was THE VANISHING (not the miserable American version--I mean the original French film).So it is in this movie. Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek play the father and wife, respectively, of a young American man who vanishes off the face of the Earth during Chile's most violent uprising. They are an unlikely pair: Lemmon's character, Ed Hormon is a proud conservative American, whereas his daughter-in-law, Beth (Spacek) is a vaguley leftist hippie. However, their search for the missing Charlie, and their love for him, bring them together in almost typical Hollywood fashion. But the relationship is more complex. What saves the film from that two-dimensional Hollywood ending is that they are also brought together by the horror and very real fear of the violent chaos all around them. Each interrogation of witnesses, each visit to the local militia, each stop-over at the stuffed-to-the-windows morgues seem to quench a little more the sparks of hope and belief in their fellow man in their eyes.
I've always loved Jack Lemmon (God, I miss him!) in his brilliant comedies, but never cared for his serious roles (SAVE THE TIGER? Feh!). In MISSING, however, his performance is without flaw. Sissy Spacek delivers her reliable skills to this movie as well. See it.
Rocco Dormarunno, author of THE FIVE POINTS.
Movie Review: Powerful and touching movie
Summary: 5 Stars
First of all, this review is based on the VHS version. I am trying to decide on what extras are included on the DVD before purchasing it.
This is one of the saddest movies I've ever seen. Its a story about disillusionment with ones government seen through the eyes of a father, Ed Hormann (Jack Lemmon) searching for his son, Charles Hormann, in the aftermath of the CIA sponsored overthrow of the Allende Government in Chile, 1972.
Helping him bridge the gap between his utopian view of the United States as promoter and savior of democracy and his son's leftward leaning, Vietnam War era generation view of the world is his daughter in law, Beth Hormann, (Sissy Spacek).
Throughout the ordeal of their search Jack Lemmons character has his eyes pried open to what is happening and he gains respect and admiration for the strength of his son and, especially, his daughter in law, where before existed only contempt at their choice of a "bohemian" lifestyle.
This is based on a true story and the story is continuing to unfold. With immunity being stripped from General Pinochet, many of the documents and witnesses surrounding the events leading up to the roundup and execution of these "leftists" are being brought to light and used against the former dictator in both criminal and civil suits; one of which is based on the events of this movie.
I highly recommend this movie as a human drama and as a historical reference. I can't imagine someone watching this movie and not doing a google search for the true story of these events. When I saw this movie during its general release I ran to the library to do research on the facts surrounding this sad chapter in US diplomacy.
If you do, we all keep Charles Hormann alive in some way.
Movie Review: Shattering, powerful, and more important than ever
Summary: 5 Stars
Based on Thomas Hauser's book, "The Execution of Charles Horman: An American Sacrifice", Costa Govras' MISSING caused a sensation when it was first released. Winner of the Palm D'Or, and nominated for a slew of Oscars, the film details the true events of Charles Horman, a 31 year old filmmaker and writer who, along with his wife, were living in Chile when the Allende government was overthrown in a bloody coup d'etat on (ironically) Sept. 11, 1973. Horman disappeared soon after, leaving his wife Joyce (named Beth in the movie) and father in a desperate search to find him amidst the tumultuous political terror of the Pinochet regime. Led in circles by incompetent US embassy and government officials, it becomes clear that the United States may very well have conspired in Horman's disappearance...
With the recent events of Pinochet's hopeful trial for crimes against humanity, and the obvious occupation of Iraq under the Bush administration, MISSING remains a political powerhouse. But the film also works on a very human level -- how a father comes to learn more about his son than he ever imagined, and the terrible knowledge that our country participated in the overthrow of one of the oldest Democratically-elected governments in favor of a tyrant who killed thousands of human beings.
Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek are at the top of their form, and Vangelis provides a simple, haunting score.
For more information on the Horman case, go to "The Charles Horman Truth Project" at http://www.hormantruth.org/index.htm. Also, I strongly recommend the book, "The Pinochet File" at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1565845862/qid=1101237538/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/104-2695843-3789511?v=glance&s=books&n=507846.
Movie Review: Shock and Awe: the First Round
Summary: 5 Stars
Charles Horman, the young man whose "disappearance" following the murderous right-wing coup in Chile is the subject of this powerful film, was a classmate and friend of mine at Harvard College. After graduation, I didn't keep in touch with Charlie. In fact, the first I heard of his fate at the hands of the butcher Pinochet was when this movie was released. Needless to say, it was the most traumatic experience I've ever had at the cinema.
Ironically, one of the other young men at Harvard in the early 1960s was the son of Milton Friedman, the University of Chicago economist whose economic dogma of absolutist capitalist had almost as much to do with the death of Charles Horman and of the thousands of others who "disappeared" into CIA files and unmarked mass graves in Chile, Argentina, and Brazil. I can't remember for sure whether Charlie, David Friedman, and I ever argued about politics/economics as a threesome, but if we did, it would have cast Charlie as the moderate. Moderation and human decency were the qualities most remembered about Charles Horman among his friends and acquaintances at Harvard. Rather few of us foresaw that Friedman's 'neo-liberal' economics, now known as neo-conservatism, would become the intellectual justification of decades of terror-based tyranny in Latin America just as much as for the rise of Reaganomics and the attempt by GW Bush to build a new global free-market Iraq not wanted by Iraqis. This story is well told in the recent book "The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism" by Naomi Klein. If the movie "Missing" made an impression on you, wait till you read the book!