Ron Howard rounds up brutality and stereotypes for his abysmal Western.
By STEVE PERSALL
Published November 26, 2003
[Photos: Revolution Studios]
Tommy Lee Jones and Cate Blanchett play an estranged father and daughter in The Missing. Both are okay, but the same can’t be said of the movie.
THE MISSING: Director Ron Howard misfires in this Western starring Cate Blanchett, above, as a frontier woman whose daughter disappears.
Ron Howard doesn't have the stomach for the violence he's depicting in The Missing, a run-of-the-mill Western except for its deplorable view of American Indians, frontier women and the film conventions it rips off.
In this movie, the only good Indians are dead ones, except for a white man (Tommy Lee Jones) who soaked up their culture so long that he can supposedly show them how to live properly. Women pose as tough and independent, such as Cate Blanchett's single mom and herb doctor, but they're destined to be kidnapped by Indians and sold as sex slaves to horny Mexicans (another insensitive touch), or else escorted to the sidelines while the menfolk take care of things.
Of course, taking care of things means gunplay that Howard doesn't stage with any palpable aggression, bludgeonings practically seen through the fingers covering Howard's eyes and disingenuous shocks such as a cowboy trussed up in a gunny sack and slow-roasted over an open fire. This is a movie that begins with a rotten tooth being yanked from an old woman's mouth. By the end credits, we know how she feels.
Howard never made Western. Making one with so many allusions to the quintessential Western - John Ford's 1956 classic, The Searchers - probably wasn't a good idea. Even the titles are connectable, as if this were the midsection of a trilogy with The Found coming next. Both movies feature white girls stolen by Indians. Both have grizzled relatives (John Wayne's uncle, now Jones' grandfather) seeking to rescue the girls.
After that, the films go separate ways, with Howard taking the low road. The Searchers was a movie designed to subvert Hollywood's Western myths. The Missing embraces those tired cliches and reckless stereotypes as if Ford had never made his point. The Searchers severely blurred our images of cowboy heroes, with Wayne becoming sociopathic, ready to kill his niece because she falls in love with an Indian. The Missing seems to be made from the perspective that Wayne's character is right.
Blanchett plays Maggie Gilkeson, a healer with two daughters - teenaged Lily (Evan Rachel Wood) and younger Dot (Jenna Boyd) - who is living with a rancher named Brake (Aaron Eckhart). An unconvincing Indian visitor (stone-faced Jones in a laughable wig) turns out to be Maggie's father, who deserted her. She isn't happy to see him. After a few stern conversations, Brake and the girls travel into the wilderness and don't return. Maggie finds Dot alive, Lily missing and Brake well-done. She goes to town seeking cavalry help, but the general (Val Kilmer doing his Tombstone twang) is going in the wrong direction.
Someone tells Maggie it takes an Indian to catch an Indian. Her father, whose tribal name is phonetically spelled in the subtitled conversations with real Indians, will have to do. Whatever domestic sparks they were developing are forgotten for the sake of the quest.
From there, it's a downturn in taste and tension. It turns out that Lily is the latest victim of an Indian gang (with a white guy and a few Hispanics added in a transparent lunge for fairness) selling girls to Mexican brothels. The leader is a plug-ugly dude named Chidin (Eric Schweig), who also is a brujo, or witch. The supernatural stuff gets silly soon, but Chidin's strange powders do offer Howard a few bloody moments to flub. The Missing gets more lurid by the minute, until a final showdown that is anticlimactic, although there really hasn't been a point of conclusion before it.
Howard and cinematographer Salvatore Totino manage a few Fordian vistas to please the eye, while James Horner's persistently intrusive musical score annoys the ear. Blanchett keeps her dignity, but it's tough with such diminishing importance of her role. Jones is just Jones again, which would be fine if not for that wig and scenes calling for him to perform Indian prayer chants. Not a pretty sight. Then again, nothing is in The Missing.
The Missing
Grade: D
Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Cate Blanchett, Evan Rachel Wood, Jenna Boyd, Eric Schweig, Aaron Eckhart, Val Kilmer
Screenplay: Ken Kaufman, based on the novel The Last Ride by Thomas Eidson Rating: R; graphic violence, sexual situations, profanity
