The Missing **** (2003, Tommy Lee Jones, Cate Blanchett, Evan Rachel Wood, Jenna Boyd, Aaron Eckhart, Val Kilmer, Eric Schweig) Classic Movie Review 5890

Maggie Gilkeson (Cate Blanchett) and her estranged father Samuel Jones (Tommy Lee Jones), raised by the Apache people, are reunited by a crisis when her teenage daughter Lilly (Evan Rachel Wood) is abducted by Pesh-Chidin (Eric Schweig), a killer with psychic powers.

Pesh-Chidin and his renegade crew are terrorising the 1885 desolate American Southwest, kidnapping teenage girls to sell them into slavery in Mexico, and Maggie and Jones must reunite to race against time to reach the abductors before they cross the border and Maggie is lost for ever.

Jones and Blanchett are superb, and Schweig a splendidly scary villain, in director Ron Howard’s rather magnificent, slow-burning 2003 epic Western, with pretty of true grit, lots of time for character development eagerly devoured by the actors, and a nice spin of mysticism.

Though this splendidly tense and beautiful movie is not about action, it comes in regular and plentiful bursts throughout the movie after the first half hour, and certainly does not disappoint. Aaron Eckhart, as Blanchett’s ranch hand Brake Baldwin, disappears too early on, Val Kilmer as Army lieutenant Jim Ducharme has nothing to do and Wood’s role is annoying and frustratingly underwritten, leaving the whole show to Jones and Blanchett.

Ken Kaufman’s screenplay is based on the novel The Last Ride by Thomas Eidson.

Also in the cast are Jenna Boyd, Sergio Calderón, Steve Reevis, Jay Tavare, Simon Baker, Ray McKinnon, Max Perlich, Ramon Frank, Deryle J Lujan, Matthew E Montoya, Rod Rondeaux, Juddson Keith Linn, Dutch Lunak, Elisabeth Moss, Yolanda Nez, Clint Howard, Rance Howard, Arron Shiver, David Midthunder and Paul Scallan.

It is shot by Salvatore Totino, produced by Daniel Ostroff, scored by James Horner and designed by Guy Barnes.

It is the kind of film you expect to find covered in awards, but there weren’t any. It was fairly costly at $60 million, and unsurprisingly not a big hit, taking $26,900,000 in the US.

There are two versions – the original cinema release version at 137 minutes and a really epic extended version at 154 minutes.

Kilmer accepted the brief role as he lives on a New Mexico ranch nearby to the shoot.

Totino is also Howard’s cinematographer on The Da Vinci Code (2006).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5890

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com