November 26, 2003 | For persuasive
proof that, just like our mothers warned us, you really can have too
much of a good thing, look no further than The Missing .
Ron Howard's vividly gritty and brutally arresting Western is a powerfully
effective piece of work, obviously inspired by John Ford's The Searchers – John
Wayne's final line in that classic is echoed here by a major character – but
well worth appreciating for its own considerable merits.
Trouble is, Howard tends to dawdle while taking his audience on a hard
ride, and can't resist the temptation to tack a fourth act onto what
essentially is a three-act story. It's easy to understand why he might
want to linger so long with his vividly drawn and masterfully performed
characters. But it's just as easy to be uncomfortably aware of time passing
and suspense diminishing in the final reel.
Adapted by screenwriter Ken Kaufman ( Space Cowboys )
from a novel by Thomas Eidson, the classically-structured scenario
pivots on Maggie Gilkeson (Cate Blanchett), a resilient widow raising
two young daughters while tending cattle and working as a “healer” (i.e., an unlicensed
and obviously self-taught doctor) in 1885 New Mexico. One terrible day,
Lilly (Evan Rachel Wood), Maggie's teen-age daughter, is snatched by
renegades who specialize in selling nubile girls into slavery south of
the border. The local law enforcers offer no help, so Maggie must enlist
the aid of her long-estranged father, Jones (an aptly cast Tommy Lee
Jones), a grizzled stoic who recently – and conveniently – returned from
decades of living with various Native American tribes.
Not surprisingly, the father-and-child reunion doesn't begin as an all-is-forgiven
love feast. Indeed, the very best scenes in The Missing are
those that chart the grudgingly slow development of something like a
wary truce between Maggie, who can't forgive her father for inexplicably
abandoning his family when she was a child, and Jones, who offers neither
apologies or explanations because, truth be told, he can't comprehend
his own motives for leaving in the first place. There's a terrific moment
in which Jones explains why he bothered to return, but I won't spoil
it for you by even suggesting his reasoning or Maggie's reaction. Suffice
it to say that, here and elsewhere in The Missing, Jones and
Blanchett generate a singularly potent chemistry while bringing out the
best in each other.
Not unlike The Searchers , Howard's
film relies on a chief villain who's rendered not so much as a flesh-and-blood
character as a larger-than-life bogeyman. In this case, the baddie
is Pesh-Chidin (Eric Schweig), a hulking, hideously scarred “brujo” (i.e., a spell-casting
and trash-talking Apache warlock) who apparently decided to form a slave-trading
gang only because it's the most evil activity he can imagine. Howard
attempts a shiver-inducing parallel between Pesh-Chidin's witchcraft
and Maggie's “civilized” healing, and at one point suggests that the
brujo has cast a spell on his pursuer. Unfortunately, these supernatural
elements – heavily exploited, it should be noted, in the movie's trailers
and TV spots – are insufficiently integrated into the main story, and
serve primarily as distracting widow dressing.
Jenna Boyd makes a strong impression in the rescue party as Dot, Maggie's
younger and feistier daughter, while key supporting roles are filled with
such standouts as Aaron Eckhart (as Maggie's doomed sweetheart) and Jay
Tavare (as a vengeful Apache with his own reasons for hunting Pesh-Chiden).
Cinematographer Salvatore Totino does yeoman work in creating and sustaining
an atmosphere of dread and foreboding, and James Horner's music enhances
the chilly mood when it doesn't sound like bits and pieces left over from
the composer's Titanic score.