The Missing (Widescreen Edition)

The Missing (Widescreen Edition)
by Ron Howard

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Movie Reviews of The Missing (Widescreen Edition)

Movie Review: WOW !!! The return of the "Searchers"
Summary: 5 Stars

"The Missing" is a mostly Indian and Indian western (as opposed to Cowboy and Indian)that takes place in New Mexico in the 1880s

CAST - Main Characters
Tommy Lee Jones - Samuel Jones
Cate Blanchett - Maggie Gilkeson
Evan Rachel Wood - Lily Gilkeson
Eric Schweig - Chidin, Apache Brujo
Jenna Boyd - Dot Gilkeson

THE PLOT

Apache renegade Army scouts are on the loose and they are murdering farmers and ranchers and kidnapping the young attractive women to be sold into white slavery in Mexico.

Healer/Rancher Maggie Gilkerson's oldest daughter, Lily, perhaps seventeen is one of the captives.

THE STORY

Samuel Jones (Tommy Lee Jones) is Maggie Gilkerson's (Cate Blanchett)estranged father. He left Maggie's family years earlier to live among the Apache. Samuel for all appearances is an Indian and after living with the Indians for half his life he thinks like one too.

Samuel rides into Maggie's ranch ostensibly looking for rapprochement but he is rejected out of hand and forced at gunpoint to leave.

The next day Maggie's daughters, Lily and Dot are escorted to town by their two ranch hands to attend a fair. By dark they have not returned. In the morning a riderless horse runs through the yard. Something is very amiss!

Maggie takes the horse in addition to her own and heads off to try and locate her missing party. What she finds is heart wrenching. One of the ranch hands lies naked with three arrows in his back and there is a bundle hanging from a tree. As the breeze swings the bundle around she sees that it is the other ranch hand, the foreman and her lover, trussed up in a painful contortion and brutally murdered.

One good thing, Dot, the younger daughter, was told to hide and not come out. Maggie finds her totally shaken up but unharmed, however, Lily is nowhere to be found.

Maggie's first thought is that, her father Samuel, has committed this monstrosity. She heads off to town and reports it to the Sheriff and suggests that it might be Samuel, who happened to be in jail, drunk and disorderly.

By use of that marvelous new invention Marconi's telegraph, they discover that a group of escaped Indian renegades is murdering ranchers and abducting young women. It is believed that they are heading north and the Army is after them.

Maggie's efforts to get the Sheriff's assistance are useless as he tells her to let the Army do the job. When the Sheriff asks Maggie what he should do with her father, she replies "release him"

Back at her ranch, Samuel rides in and informs her that he has discovered the renegades trail, which heads south towards Mexico and not north as supposed. At this point Maggie realizes that Lily and her only hope is to enlist her father's help.

Meanwhile, the renegades, now with seven women have almost finished their human harvest. The leader is Chiden, a particularly brutal and evil individual, who is also a Brujo, (a male witch) with supernatural powers, who hates Whites and kills indiscriminately. The nefarious Chiden does not like the number seven (it's bad luck for him) so they delay going to Mexico until another girl can be acquired.

This buys our little search party a little more precious time, for once a captive Lily enters Mexico she is lost.

Cast/Acting

The cast seem to be well chosen and fit their characters quite well. There has been some discussion among other reviewers about the lack of emotion. I think emotion was portrayed perfectly. These people were settlers, farmers and ranchers. Life was hard, they did have time for emotion and once the renegades struck emotion had to be set aside for a goal of retrieving Lily. That does not mean the characters were emotionless, they weren't.

Cate Blanchett and the little girl, Jenna Boyd, were superb. Blanchett's portrayal of Maggie Gilkison is about a self made, self-sufficient, brave and determined, frontierswoman out to reclaim her daughter even at the cost of her other daughter and her life. I really enjoyed Boyd's role as Dot. She was laid back and affable, kind of a bridge between the tensions of mother and grandfather. Tommy Lee Jones' portrayed a lonely older man drawing on his experiences in two societies to help his daughter to find and buy Lily back.

It seems that Ron Howard has found his niche. He is a fine Director and "The Missing" is no exception. I can't believe how many reviewers said this movie was slow moving and boring. To me it was a quick 130 minutes. Yes I felt while I was watching it that it was a long movie but I was glad, because I was really enjoying it.

SUMMARY

Of course comparisons to the old (1956) John Wayne movie "The Searchers" are inevitable, hell I did it myself in the title. Yes, it has a similar plot but that's about it. In "The Searchers", Wayne's character is a civil war vet, a movie about White men chasing after Commanche Indians who have his niece. In "The Missing", the main characters are a gritty frontierswoman and her estranged Apache-phile father chasing renegades to recover her daughter. The only White man was one of the renegades. In 1956 no one would have thought to make a movie about a strong willed, self sufficient woman. Isn't it great?

Personally, I like "The Missing more". In the fifties the movies were less realistic, more sanitized and the acting and sets were less natural. Heck both movies are good and if Ron Howard, after 47 years, said he was making a remake of "The Searchers", comparisons would have been moot and many detractors would have been singing the praises of "The Missing", the remake of the great "Searchers"

I liked this movie a lot! final rating: 4.8 stars

Summary of The Missing (Widescreen Edition)