The Missing

Tommy Lee Jones and Cate Blanchett are great, and the film could have been too if it hadn't been so unreasonably long (I can't imagine the director's cut being twenty minutes longer) and, above all, so boring at times. It's not that I don't mind that there's no shooting in a western, not at all. But in short, well, it dragged on a bit too much during the final three-quarters of an hour, nothing surprised me... And the final confrontation wasn't much either. From time to time I thought of The Stalking Moon with Gregory Peck, which The Missing can only look up to in admiration. (12/30/2015)

The Missing is not a bad film at all. The suspense works perfectly and the bad guys are truly nasty. Some of the scenes go overboard with their cruelty. Cate Blanchett is great from the first moment, Tommy Lee Jones as a long-haired Indian takes some getting used to at first, but you soon come to believe him and feel fine with him. Truly beautiful cinematography, dynamic action scenes, and very nice music by James Horner. The film’s weakness lies in the seriously intended yet comical shamanic scenes (the resurrection of the possessed Cate), as well as in the intermingling of the action-thriller and psychological levels, where the daughter gradually finds her way to her long-lost father. The closer the film gets to the climax and the more we long for the bad guys to be eliminated and the happy ending to come, the more we are denied this moment of redemption, and the pace is slowed by the quiet father/daughter passages. The film thus fails to build and often seems to drag. It would have been better if the subject matter had been conceived strictly as a western thriller. (08/18/2004)