Rating: 
Summary: WOW !!! The return of the "Searchers"
Review: What's wrong with everybody, so many reviews rated so LOW! So I guess it's up to moi, the guy that hardly ever sees it their(the majority) way to step up and straighten things out. "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
Rating: 
Summary: The Missing...
Review: I thought this movie would be great when I went to the video store to rent it. It is good, not great. For one thing it is way to long to keep you interested for 2hrs 17min. The only movie that can are Lord of the Rings and The Matrix. The ending to the missing is very good and the story is good too. I just think Ron Howard could have made it a bit shorter. If The Missing were shorter, say 1hr 45min, I would have given it 4 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Boring and forgettable western nonsense
Review: A dull and easily forgotten suspense movie with no suspense. The trailers and DVD box promise a mystery and a chase that basically never develop. The brilliant Australian actress Cate Blanchett is wasted here, as is Tommy Lee Jones and even bright newcomer Evan Rachel Wood. This is one of the worst directed films I have seen in a long time, and I am counting some real clunkers. Ron Howard really falls down on the job here, which is a surprise. The cinematography sacrifices clarity to "arty" effects, so that the colors are leached out unrealtistically and everyone looks pale and sickly. There is a climatic fight at the end which is shot in such low light that it's nearly impossible to tell what's going on -- certainly such a thing is possible in real life, but in a drama it's just a confusing waste of the viewers time. We're presented with a wealth of seemingly complicated relationships -- an abandoning father who has taken up Indain ways, a mother with complicated feelings towards her teenage daughter (who was the result of a rape), a spiritual battle between a Mexican "brujo" and a Christian healer -- but all character development just peters out without explanation or resolution. Maggie (Blanchett) is having an affair with her ranch hand (Aaron Eckart), but when he is horrifically murdered and she discovers his mutilated body, she expresses little or no emotion and the character is never mentioned again, although the implication is initially that they are in love. This kind of abandoned story arc runs all through the movie, with the end result that we care not one iota about any of the characters, so their survival or demise is of no real concern. There is less to talk or think about in this big budget, big star production than a typical episode of "Bonanza" (the 60s western TV series). A surprisingly dull and half-hearted effort from all involved. This is not worth renting, let alone buying.
Rating:
Summary: Very exciting
Review: I really enjoyed this movie. I think that Tommy Lee Jones and Cate Blanchet are excellent actors and I really enjoyed their performance in this movie. Granted the movie was a little long but I did not feel like it was dragging. I think considering they were riding horses and it took place in the 1800's made a big difference in how fast and long they traveled. The Indians who took the girls weren't in any hurry as they picked up more along the way the sell. A person can only ride so long in the desert without stopping and resting and remember she was a "healer" and was taking care of people along the way.
all in all, I thought it was a very good movie, so good that I bought it. Lee Lewis
Rating:
Summary: "The Missing" chugs along in snail-like fashion...
Review: Cate Blanchette is an up-and-coming actress... no question about it. I truly believe she will be one of the next female mega-stars to emerge from Hollywood. But not by the standards of her character in "The Missing". Side by side with Tommy Lee Jones and you'd expect a pretty good movie. Not to mention a famed director like Ron Howard. Judging by some of Howard's other memorable movies, I'd have to say this is no "Backdraft", no "Apollo 13", no "A Beautiful Mind", not even a "Willow". "The Missing" pits Maggie (Blanchette) in the far west somewhere with her two daughters. The voodoo magic man (played by the master of ugly, Eric Scheig) kidnaps her oldest daughter and it's up to Maggie to ask her estranged father to help track her and get her back. The story brings you through some beautiful scenery and nice cinematography... but the story just chugs along in snail-like fashion. The good guys win, the bad guys lose. Tommy Lee Jones falls off a cliff and survives. The 2-DVD set (which should have been on 1 disc) includes the original trailer, deleted scenes, 3 alternate endings, and 2 featurettes (however there is no director or actor commentaries). It's an average "western"... right up there with the other one from 2003 "Open Range". Good but not great - and by no means classic.
Rating:
Summary: Completely disappointing
Review: When you read the back of the DVD to find out the plot, please remember that what is written is misleading. I watched the movie expecting some sort of demon as the evil in the movie. However, I was wrong. Very wrong. The "evil" they find in this movie is not what you'd think of when you think supernatural. Also, this is not Tommy Lee Jones best acting. :( Although, I was fairly impressed with Cate Blanchett as a pioneer woman in New Mexico. But...you have been warned.
Rating:
Summary: Something is Missing Alright
Review: The Missing is based on a similar theme to John Wayne's The Searchers; a family member is kidnapped by renegades and must be recaptured. Unfortunately both movies also suffer from the same central problem, a boring storyline between the capture and re-capture. Both The Searchers and The Missing lose their way in a meandering, unexposed, and disjointed story that seems to have been created just to fill time getting to the final conclusion. The Missing is a tedious movie that lives up to the movie making reputation of Ron Maxwell (Gods & Generals) and not Academy Award winner Ron Howard. It is a step backward after a great movie like A Beautiful Mind.
Rating:
Summary: Shape-Shifting brilliant fun!!!!!!!!!
Review: Dark hooded shape-shifting phantom???????? All i can say is that he better be in the deleted scenes!!!!!TOSH
Rating:
Summary: the missing
Review: This is a most sensitive and realistly approached cowboy film
one become so tiried of the unrealist over worked plots usually
seen in these things ...this put a new spark a new twist to things....the brogue ...was understandably angry but he sure
scared the stuffing out of me...... the research on this subject
was eerrie it was so accurate
thank you Mr. Howard keep it up
Erzulli
Rating: 
Summary: Sub-par
Review: It's only a testament to how good a director Ron Howard is that I write to express my disappointment in this really slow-moving film. It just never really seems to come together on any level. Howard's films are traditionally extremely character driven and I was shocked when that seemed to be the movie's main failing. What drove Cate Blanchett and Tommy Lee Jones's characters were just never really explored. It wasn't for lack of time either, clocking in at over two hours, the film was far too long. I don't want to give the wrong impression either; it certainly wasn't the worst movie I've ever seen. It's more that when Howard's on we get movies like Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind. I was really disappointed that, by the bar he set for himself, this film is WAY below his ability. At over twenty dollars I couldn't possibly recommend buying a copy
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