A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

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Title: The Missing

Date of original theatrical release: 2003

Details:

Tommy Lee Jones

Cate Blanchett

Evan Rachel Wood

Jenna Boyd

Aaron Eckhart

Eric Schweig

Director: Ron Howard

Score: James Horner

Score: 1/2

The Review: In the late 1800's, occasional white settlers would voluntarily abandon their homesteads and families, and "go native" -- join Native American tribes and take up their culture and practices. There's an interesting story here waiting to be written, somewhere between psychology and anthropology -- what was the attraction?, or motivation?, or resolution? Was this in any way different from more contemporary quests -- the "searching for oneself" of the 60's and 70's? And does the same thing happen today, but across different cultures?

One of these individuals is at the core of The Missing -- Tommy Lee Jones as a Chicoruhua given the name Chaa-duu-ba-its-iidan (the translation is a hoot!) -- but he's not the focal point. That is taken up by a dour Cate Blanchett, playing a frontier widow, with two daughters, trying to make her way as both healer and rancher in the territory that will eventually become New Mexico. Through a series of dire circumstances, her oldest daughter goes missing, and she forms with Jones an alliance of necessity, laced with conflict and anger. The shock is that Jones is actually her estranged father -- someone whom she's hated for over 25 years for abandoning them ("the enemy of my enemy is my friend"?). Once you get over the coincidence -- and it's not, as will become clear -- the plot becomes an almost standard western drama. Almost, but not quite. It's quite grim and violent -- one of director Ron Howard's darker efforts -- and it also has more than a touch of the mystical, as if the plot were hatched in collaboration with Shyamalan: a quite straightforward use of Indian magic, both offensive and defensive. And the cavalry are neither wholly good nor well-intentioned. Curious.

Good, Braveheart-like score from Horner. Excellent performance from Jenna Boyd, as the youngest daughter brought along for the ride.

(29-Oct-06)

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