Review: The Missing

I've always felt that Ron Howard's strongest films were his early comedies (Night Shift, Splash, even parts of The Paper), in which he displayed a knack for wrangling comic actors into tightly-tailored roles. His best film, the Steve Martin starrer, Parenthood, is a pretty terrific Altman-light character piece in which Howard showed tremendous restraint of schmaltz, and an enormous gift of comic sensibilities. What Howard has never had is a strong visual palette. A prototypcial Hollywood director, Howard is merely adequate at conveying legitimately "cinematic" movie moments.

Some think he made a step in the right direction with A Beautiful Mind. I do think that film is the best of his dramas (Far and Away, Backdraft, Apollo 13 and Ransom are serviceable at best), but it still seemed like he was more adept at gauging his actor's abilities than honing his own.

The Missing is a vast misfire. Taking his lead from John Ford's epic The Searchers (one of the ten greatest films of all time in my opinion), Howard strips away all of the issues: racism, pride in self, man's place in the scope of nature. He ignores all of this and instead focuses on a ho-hum father-daughter reconciliation.

Tommy Lee Jones (playing what seems like his 20th "tracker" role, after The Fugitive, U.S. Marshals, and The Hunted) plays an again white man turned Indian disciple who returns to make amends with his estrange daughter (Cate Blanchett). After their disastrous meeting, he leaves and Blanchett's lover and her ranch hand are murdered by Indians. One daughter (Evan Rachel Wood, starlet of the moment) is kidnapped by slave-trading Indians, the other (Jenna Boyd, in the film's best performance) left to wander, looking for her mother. Eventually, Blanchett enlists the help of her father to track down her kidnapped daughter. Along the way, they learn about each other, they reconcile, blah blah blah.

Howard has no sense of geography here (a death toll for a Western). He somehow manages to make the West feel claustrophobic, relying heavily upon medium and close shots. Time passes without consequence, characters are introduced but never developed, and the director seems to be toiling on a project that he has no idea how to wrap his arms around.

Whether another director could have made this film more successful is questionable. The banal story is predictable enough that it might have been a failure no matter who was attached to it.

As it stands, Howard has delivered yet another bland, "adult" drama, aimed at capturing the masses, rather than challenging them.

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