Rating: 
Summary: Solid Western
Review: I very much liked The Missing. Cate Blanchett is a wonder and a fearless actress not hesitating to appear plain and unglamorous. She is a chameleon, inhabiting her roles and seemingly Streep-like in being able to successfully take on anything. Here she is a believable homesteader in late 1800's New Mexico. Matching her in this Western adventure/thriller is Tommy Lee Jones, in one of the best roles and performances he's had in ages. They are terrific together, and much of the movie is their struggle with their various emotions about the other. I especially enjoyed Tommy Lee's extended dialogue in Apache, which he apparently spent a great deal of time learning and he delivers with natural ease.A basic murder/kidnapping and the subsequent chase to find a lost daughter may evoke John Ford's The Searchers, but The Missing is its own movie, with its own character conflicts and dimensions. Stunningly photographed amid marvelous Southwest winter scenery, Ron Howard's film held my interest throughout. Not quite a classic, but a solid and fine effort throughout.
Rating: 
Summary: 2003's best film!
Review: Ron Howard, how can I thank you, as a filmmaker, in less than 1,000 words, for delivering "The Missing," southern gothic filmmaking at it's very best. Cate Blanchett ("The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King") stars as Maggie, a tough-as-nails western woman who teams up with her Apache-obsessed father, played by Tommy Lee Jones ("The Fugitive"), to find her MISSING daughter (Evan Rachel Wood, "Thirteen"). It's the perfect film for western, horror, and drama fans, combining all the elements that make those genres great. Buy it, you won't regret it!
Rating:
Summary: Review for The Missing
Review: Even when he tries to get dirty, Ron Howard somehow ends up almost squeaky clean. Grit--true gift--is what's missing from The Missing. The movie is thrilling and beautiful, only really stummbling in its last action scenes. The master sentimentalist has made a dark, menacing film, a lean and disturbing western with some modern subtexts that goes where no Ron Howard film has gone before. Howard's new picture is ponderously ordinary, pointlessly overlong at 130 minutes, and so poorly structured that it seems to end a half dozen times. Nearly 50 years after John Ford's Searchers we have arrived at a point in film history when the movie industry can offer a less sophisticated version of the same material, though, I recommend seeing this.
Rating:
Summary: Romance, Violence, Determination ...and the right ending
Review: Totally unexpected! A five star movie for "adults". It is long and we got to know the characters. One day later I'm wondering how they're doing and I miss them. To me that's indicative of a very good movie. The story has been told many times, but not often this well. We were transfixed.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best
Review: THE MISSING is a superior piece of entertainment from director Ron Howard. Cate Blanchett plays Maggie, a frontierswoman whose oldest daughter is kidnapped by men planning to sell her into prostitution. The villains are led by a witch (a "brujo") played by Eric Schweig, but are both Indian and white. Maggie's estranged father Jones (Tommy Lee Jones) is Maggie's only hope to get her daughter back. Most of the movie is a chase through New Mexico (circa 1885) with several well staged and violent shootouts.
It's a movie convention that people in the Old West were terse and gruff and shot from the hip, pardon the pun. Jones' and Blanchett's characters don't really know how to communicate with each other through most of the movie. Their performances are very interior; so much is communicated with a look or a facial expression. Of course, there is a moment of bonding, but it's powerfully underplayed. (Compare Jones' and Blanchett's final scene to Costner's movie-stopping-in-their-tracks soliloquies in OPEN RANGE). That's not to say this isn't an action movie though. Indeed, Jones has never displayed this kind of physicality before. Cheers to the supporting cast, led by Evan Rachel Wood (the kidnapee) and Jenna Boyd as Blanchett's daughters.
THE MISSING is highly recommended, with excellent performances by Tommy Lee Jones and Cate Blanchett.
Rating:
Summary: Blue Duck who?
Review: Last time I saw Tommy Lee Jones in a western, it was as Cap'n Call in the magnificent 1989 TV miniseries LONESOME DOVE. There, he and Gus (Robert Duvall) are beset with an old nemesis, the nastily evil half-breed, Blue Duck. In THE MISSING, there's Chidin, who makes Blue Duck look like a choirboy in comparison. It's 1885 New Mexico, and Maggie Gilkeson (Cate Blanchett) bosses a cattle ranch on the periphery of civilization. Maggie has two daughters, the teenage Lily (Evan Rachel Wood) and 10-year old Dot (Jenna Boyd). Maggie is unmarried, but is sweet on her ranch foreman, Brake. Maggie is also a country healer, and one day Samuel Jones (Tommy Lee Jones) shows up for some docterin'. Jones is Maggie's father, who deserted the family to "go Indian" when his daughter was very young. Now, Samuel is more an old Apache than an old White Guy, and Maggie despises him for what he did to her and Mom. But then, Lily is kidnapped and Brake tortured to death by a band of white renegades and U.S. Army Apache Scout deserters led by Chidin, a native witch doctor that's heap bad medicine personified. The marauders are snatching girls from homesteads all over the territory with the intent of selling them into slavery in Mexico. Getting no help from the local sheriff or the Army, Maggie persuades Jones to help her track her daughter and her abductors. This is Tommy Lee's best performance since the FUGITIVE, though whether it's good enough to merit a Best Actor Oscar nomination remains to be seen. Jones is up against some stiff competition this year, including Crowe in MASTER & COMMANDER, Penn in MYSTIC RIVER, Hopkins in THE HUMAN STAIN, Murray in LOST IN TRANSLATION, and perhaps Cruise in THE LAST SAMURAI. Similarly, THE MISSING will have an uphill battle for Best Picture. Blanchett, however, is another matter. Every screen role she undertakes is of Best Actor quality. (She already has VERONICA GUERIN under her belt for 2003). I suggest it would take a phenomenal performance by another actress, e.g. Kidman in THE HUMAN STAIN, to overcome Cate's consistently extraordinary talent. Perhaps a viewer's biggest criticism of THE MISSING might be that it's beyond belief that Maggie would take Dot along on the dangerous pursuit of Chidin. By today's standards, yes, it would be. (Even taking your kid to the mall is dodgy business, what with all the prowling child predators.) However, Maggie is a tough and self-reliant woman living in perilous times. Perhaps taking Dot along on a growing-up exercise wasn't an imprudent thing, especially if Maggie knew her youngest would stubbornly follow anyway. Anyway, I didn't find that aspect of the film incredible. Big Screen horse operas of quality are relatively rare nowadays. This year we've been twice blessed - OPEN RANGE, and now THE MISSING. Stetsons off to director Ron Howard for a gritty and absorbing yarn. If nothing else, it deserves 5 stars for entertainment value.
Rating: 
Summary: Two hours of unrelenting Violence
Review: Ron Howard has borrowed freely from the plot of John Wayne's classic movie, The Searchers, to create a brutal and gory western drama. Tommy Lee Jones stars as Samuel, the long-absent father of frontier healer Maggie (played by Cate Blanchett). Seeking a reunion, he rides back into her life on the barren plains of New Mexico in 1885. Maggie's teen-angst-ridden daughter is kidnapped by Indians to be sold in Mexico, and Maggie and Samuel set out to bring her back.
This film certainly can create a mood: The frozen desert landscape kept me uncomfortably cold, and the endless cruelty on the part of the Indians was intense and gut-wrenching - too much so, for me. Jones is outstanding as the man who just didn't want to be married, and deserted his family long ago. His expressive face and twangy voice are just right. Cate Blanchett is an odd choice for the erstwhile heroine, but she is also excellent as the tough and unflinching mother. The main baddie is so convincingly and hideously played by Eric Schweig, that I could barely watch when he was on the screen. I must say the film is well written and directed, but it was just way too violent for me to consider it "entertaining." If you liked The Searchers, you may like this film, but be warned it earns its R rating with graphic brutality.
Rating:
Summary: There's nothing special about this movie
Review: There is absolutely nothing that makes Ron Howard's newest film, "The Missing" stand out from other films. The story is okay. The characters are okay. The dialouge is okay. In fact, not only is the story okay, you've heard it a million times before. Okay, here it goes: A parent (in this case, Tommy Lee Jones) goes back to his adult child (Cate Blanchett) whom he deserted when she was little and tries to make up for it. And wouldn't you know it? Right after they reunite (and she kicks him out of her house) HER daughter is kidnapped! Well, now Cate HAS to bond with her father because he's the only one who can help get her daughter back. How's that for a coinsedence?
After that set-up (that takes way too long to get off the ground), the rest of the movie is about 2 MORE HOURS of Cate, Tommy, and Cate's other daughter riding through the desert on horseback trying to find the band of Indians that have taken all the local girls to sell in Mexico. Since it's so long, the movie gets very boring near the end. Oh, not that they don't try to make it exciting. Rattlesnakes, floods, Indian curses, they throw it all in. Actually, the Indian curse scene is in a way the climax of the movie...yawn. It's all very predictable and WAY too long. Though "The Missing" is well made, it just doesn't quite work.
Rating:
Summary: Slightly flawed but HIGHLY ENTERTAINING!
Review: The basic plot is probably pretty familiar to everyone by now: Cate Blanchett, a tough, no-nonsense woman living on her own in the wilds of New Mexico with her two daughters, is conveniently but not happily reunited with her long missing father (Jones) just a day or two before her oldest daughter is kidnapped by a renegade group of Indian and Caucasian opportunists, looking to sell women across the border in Mexico. Although Cate can barely bring herself to speak to her dad, she must agrees to accept his offer to help track the party, which is also carrying a number of other women of all ages and races. This group of bad guys is pretty darn unredeemable. Not only do they snatch women, they dispatch any men on the scene in gory, tortuous fashion. Poor Aaron Eckhart, ably playing Cate's boyfriend / protector, is taken care of in a rather grotesque manner, which we fortunately don't have to see. So, the chase is on. I want to point out that not only are Jones and Blanchett on the case, but they are joined by Blanchett's younger daughter, beautifully played by Jenna Boyd. The older daughter, played by the much praised Evan Rachel Wood, doesn't have too much to do beyond being gagged and looking unhappy or determined. Not her fault...there's not much to the part. But this young Boyd is a REAL find. I hope we see her in lots more in the future. There are some good action sequences and some beautiful scenery. The good guys take a LOT of brutal damage and overall the feeling is quite gritty. The movie is not for casual action lovers. The action is hardly of the "Matrix" or "James Bond" variety, but involves real results of violence. Crushed bones, bloody faces, mortal wounds, etc. Overall, the movie is quite satisfying. Blanchett is, as always, very good. She is such an unusual looking actress, capable of looking tough yet vulnerable, beautiful yet plain, all at the same time. Jones is always a good presence, and boy, is he UGLY in this movie. Val Kilmer makes a rather unexpected cameo...he lives in New Mexico, so it shouldn't be too big a surprise. But if you're a Kilmer fan, be warned...he's only in about 4 minutes of the movie and he's pretty unlikable. My biggest problem was with the mystical, magical element. The main "bad guy" is this huge, horrifically nasty shaman-type character. The movie totally tells us he has powers to perform evil...which I think is a bad thing. It is a gritty movie and feels "realistic" in all other fashions. But to add the element of "Harry Potter magic," isn't really all that necessary. It mostly allows for one scene involving bad things happening to Blanchett, that mostly makes the movie just a little too long. We never believe she'll be killed in this scene anyway, because the movie is far from over and she's the main character, after all! And, as I just hinted, the movie is probably about 10-15 minutes too long. Get rid of the magic, tighten things up a bit and you've got a 5-star movie. I know many will disagree with me, and that's okay too. But for me, either the magic should have been ambiguous ("Does this guy have power or not.") or the movie should have had a different tone, one that jumped more whole-heartedly into the idea that this guy is a danger not only for his physical size and brutality, but because he's got real powers too. I felt the movie kinda wanted to have it both ways in this regard. And despite the length of the movie, the ending scene or two felt a bit hastily wrapped up, and wasn't as emotionally satisfying as it should have been. But it is still a VERY enjoyable, dramatic and beautifully filmed and landscaped movie...well acted by all and with a rare, visceral quality. Recommended for adults and discerning older teens with a longer than usual attention span.
Rating:
Summary: See it for the acting, cinematography, and soundtrack
Review: Forget that this falls in the western genre. It's one of this year's better movies whether or not you think you like westerns. I don't consider it quite best picture quality, but Cate Blanchett's performance is the best by a leading actress that I've seen this year. Admittedly, I haven't seen VERONICA GUERIN or any of the indies, but I think she outclasses such as Diane Lane and Uma Thurman in their recent roles. I won't recount the story which I'm sure most of you are award of. Suffice it to say that the story is well told and greatly enhanced not only by Cate's performance, but also Tommy Lee Jones'. The New Mexico scenery is breathtaking and James Horner's musical score is definitely worth a nomination. This is good drama and while I doubt it will be one of the five best movies of the year, it's sure a good one to see while waiting for the others to come out.
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