Alicia I love this movie so much

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Jakoba True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

NateWatchesCoolMovies Ron Howard usually plays it both straight and safe, never taking too many risks, never siding too much with abstraction or grey areas, and over the years this has made me somewhat of a non fan. Not a hater, simply seldom blown away or challenged by his work. With The Missing, however, he strayed from the path and brought us a dark, threatening picture of life on the frontier in all its brutal, treacherous glory. With the success of last year's brilliant Bone Tomahawk, I couldn't help but be reminded of this beauty, as there are elements of horror and evil dancing on a thread with origin points in both films. Different altogether, but from the same elemental stew and highly reminiscent of each other. Cate Blanchett is hard bitten single mother Magdalena, trying her best to raise two daughters (Evan Rachel Wood and the excellent Jenna Boyd) with only the help of her sturdy farmhand (Aaron Eckhart). One misty night, someone or something snatches Wood right out of her bed and disappears into the wilderness with her. Magdalena is raw and determined, launching a desperate search across woods and plains to find her kin. Joining her is her half breed injun father Samuel, played by an eerily convincing Tommy Lee Jones. Samuel left her years before and only re-emerges in her life for fear of being punished for forsaking his family in the beyond. Gradually he turns around and a bond is formed through the crisis, an arc which Jones nails like the pro he is. It turns out they are tracking a group of despicable human traffickers who take girls and sell them across the border into sex slavery. They are led by a mysterious witchdoctor (Eric Schweig) whose tactics border on voodoo prowess. It's scary stuff, never outright horror, but sure aims for that with its hazy nocturnal atmosphere in which any denizen of the night could be poised behind the next thicket or cluster of trees, ready to pounce. Blanchett is tough as nails, a terrific female protagonist blessed with a mother's love and a winchester to back it up. Jones is gruff and badass, believable as a native American and treated as a well rounded character seeking redemption in his twilight years. There's also fine work from Steve Reevis, Clint Howard, Elizabeth Moss and a cool cameo from Val Kilmer as a sergeant who helps them out. My favourite Ron Howard film by far. Just a mean, dark genre piece that aims to thrill and chill in equal measures and comes up aces.

SanteeFats Very nice, also fairly realistic in my opinion too. Apache renegades are murdering men, old and older women and kidnapping young girls/women to sell down in Mexico. Of course they screw up and capture the wrong girl when they take Lilly. Tommy Lee Jones just happens to show up right before the attacks. He is a white man who has lived extensively with the Chiricahua Apache, even marrying an Apache woman. His daughter, now a healer, hates him for having left his white family many years ago. She must turn to him though when the renegades kill her lover and another hand and take Lilly. By the way the hanging scene of the lover wrapped in raw cowhide was actually used by the Apache. As it dries out rawhide contracts leading to a slow, agonizing death. Fortuitous happen stance occurs when they run across a Chirichua known to Tommy, while on the trail of the kidnappers. They join forces to go after the bad guys. Trying to free the captives, Kayitah, the one TL knows gets killed because Lilly screams out. The leader, a supposed witch, rides off to get the buyers and returns to find the camp has been attacked again by TL, the mom, the youngest daughter and the dead Apache's son. This time successfully. They have rescued the girls and get away, for a time. Going to ground in a rocky tor. The witch and his few remaining thugs of course locate them and in the attack all is resolved as several are killed, TL tackles the witch man and takes him over a cliff to both their deaths as it turns out. In the end the mom and both daughters are saved, the Apache son is reunited with his bride who was a taken one, and I guess they all live happily ever after (?).

secondtake The Missing (2003)A great cast, and great casting, make for the best core of the movie which eventually boils down to a rather well done Western. When you talk about a Western—as in the genre of movies known as Westerns— you probably picture a certain kind of plot, landscape, range of characters, and even morality. How do you make a Western now that avoids the clichés? Well, it's hard. That's one reason they faded away in the 1960s as they became parodies of themselves (not always on purpose) or exercises in excess (sometimes to superb effect, as in "The Wild Bunch" and "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly" genre). Recent Westerns tend to heighten their realism to a level less common earlier, with more brutal violence, more vivid location shooting, and a kind of acting that pulls out all the stops. The recent "True Grit" remake shows how different movies with the same plot can be. And "The Missing" is a very well made contemporary Western that doesn't escape all these pre-qualifications. And that's it's biggest downfall. It does introduce a contemporary idea into late 19th Century society—sex slave trade across the border. I don't know if this was really going on then, but it is meant to be a comment on how it happening now. It makes it really brutal and ugly, of course, and you sympathize fully.But the movie continues some dangerous clichés—the wild Indian, the naive Mexicans, the innocent hard-working pioneer families (wearing crosses), and the loner on his horse who will save the day. The loner is at first unlikely—Tommy Lee Jones—but he's really good. The rest of the cast is fine, sometimes excellent, but trapped (as is Jones) by having to fill stereotypical roles with an added wart or twitch. It's generally watchable, but sadly old hat.There is an aspect here that's truly insulting--at least to the politically correct, or the correct (to avoid that cliché). To repeat the maligning attributes that we have to assume were common but not universal of all these kinds of people is just mean and a little dumb. It makes the movie far less that it could have been.

SnoopyStyle It's 1885 New Mexico, Samuel Jones (Tommy Lee Jones) has return to reconcile with his estranged daughter Maggie Gilkeson (Cate Blanchett). He had abandoned her 20 years ago, and she rejects him right away. When her oldest daughter Lilly (Evan Rachel Wood) is kidnapped by Indian outlaws, Maggie must seek his father's help.This is a departure from the usual Ron Howard fare. It's moody atmosphere can be attributed mostly to Tommy Lee Jones' performance. It's a fascinating side note to Howard's career and great to see him imitate 'The Searchers'. There is a lot of ugliness being shown but the ending is too traditional for this stark dark tale. I think Howard couldn't really go to the lower depths in the end. It's a great effort for an accomplished director to go outside his comfort zone.