Maggie Gilkeson (Cate Blanchett) is a frontier woman living in New Mexico in 1885. She has set up a successful healing practice on her ranch which is tended to by a cowboy beau (Aaron Eckhart). She also has two young daughters to take care of: Lily, (Evan Rachel Wood) who as she approaches her later teens resents her mother for keeping her on the ranch instead of going to the fair to hear her voice on a phonograph and Dot, your rather typical movie-spunky 10-year-old. Samuel Jones (Tommy Lee Jones) rides into this uneasy mixture and immediately Maggie is tense for rather odd reasons. Her beau picks up on it and it is revealed that Jones is her father that abandoned her when she was very young. Adding to this pain is that her mother and brother died soon afterwards. Needless to say, despite Samuel’s attempts to patch their relations and Dot’s taking a liking to him, Maggie soon forces him out.
As order returns to the household, tragedy strikes when her beau and another ranch worker are killed while branding cattle. Dot is unscathed but Lily, who was riding with them, has been abducted. When Maggie ventures into town and is told by the sheriff that he can’t spare any men (they are needed for the fair; Maggie sees a phonograph. The irony!), she sees Samuel in the jail cell. He seems to be observing and when he is let out, he rides to the Gilkeson ranch and tells Maggie that it was Indians that kidnapped her daughter and that he (as a convert Indian, kind of) can help her. They set out with Dot to recover her daughter. It is then that we find out that Lily was kidnapped by a band of Indians and white men who intend to sell her, and other girls, into slavery across the border in Mexico. Their leader is a creepy-looking (what a shock) Indian mystic who makes you wonder why anyone would choose to follow or do business with him.
The direction in The Missing is rather uninspired. It reminded me of Howard’s lackluster effort in A Beautiful Mind (which inexplicably won him an Oscar). There are some well-shot scenes, but also some that beg explanation. For example, why are Samuel and Dot traveling in a gorge during a flash flood when it seems as if it could be crossed with a solid jump? The setting also seems to vary between winter and summer with each shot. I’ve heard of elevation creating snow, but this is ridiculous.
Most at fault here is the story. I don’t know about the book, but the movie has about three false endings. When the final ending finally comes, it seems utterly anti-climactic. It also plays out like some kind of Die Hard / Lethal Weapon hybrid; the outnumbered good guys hit their mark every time but the bad guys couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. It also creates an intensely unlikable character in Lily. Essentially a spoiled brat, she also manages to foil her own escape plans. When she messes up the second time, I dare you not to yell at the screen in frustration. Scenes of inexplicable attempted comedy also pepper the script. These seem more plausible when you realize the screenwriter for this also wrote Pauly Shore’s In The Army Now and Muppets From Space, but not any more excusable.
There is also an unpleasant little undercurrent of patronizing and racism. While the movie tries to present Indians in an equal light, too much attention is paid to this “mystic’s” powers. He uses his powers only when the script needs him to and in a big showdown between good and evil (don’t ask), Christian and Indian rituals combine to beat his forces of Indian evil. I know that sounds dumb and oversimplified; that is exactly how it plays, too.
The acting is solid. It’s nice to see Tommy Lee Jones in his first sharp role since 1997’s Men In Black and I would gladly listen to Cate Blanchett read a phone book. They aren’t horribly impressive, though, as if they both realized the ultimate sillyness of the plot and the fact that all the false starts and endings don’t really go anywhere. They are good enough for a pleasant enough first hour, but can’t do anything about later contrivances. There is a good movie somewhere but Ron Howard and his writer and editor don’t really want it to be found. They are content with their pretentiousness and Indian mysticism. Get out the peace pipe.