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The Missing
The basic
story has been told before: girl kidnapped by Indians, chased
by her family in hopes of rescue. How many Westerns besides
John Ford's classic The Searchers does this describe?
What can Ron Howard offer us that's new?
In truth,
not much, unless you count a subtle feminist viewpoint, an
honesty about both sides of the "cowboys and Indians" thing,
and the most powerful and effective performance Tommy Lee
Jones has given in years. If that's enough, and it is, The
Missing will be right up your alley.
Jones
plays Samuel Jones, a man who abandoned his wife and children
years before to live among the Native Americans. His reasons
are shrouded in mystery, and the eventual revelation proves
them to be almost pathetic and definitely, sadly, human.
Seeking
a return to his daughter Maggie (Cate Blanchett), and perhaps
praying for a reconciliation, Jones shows up at the ranch
she shares with the good-hearted Brake Baldwin (Aaron Eckhart).
The rancher allows Jones simple courtesies, but when it's
clear that his lover Maggie wants nothing to do with the old
man, Brake stands fast in firmly kicking him off the property.
It could
be the father's seeming lack of remorse and preponderance
of brutal honesty. One of the ideas running through this film
is how we build illusions around ourselves, whether they be
of domestic tranquility or the comfort of religious belief.
Jones has neither; even the tribes he spent time with look
down on him for his inability to stay rooted to family. And
he's so trapped within himself that he can't compromise enough
to offer kindness to his youngest granddaughter, Dot (Jenna
Boyd), a girl uneasily thrilled by the possibility that she's
part Indian.
Despite
Maggie's refusal to forgive him his absence, she ends up needing
him once a band of rogue Apache kidnap her oldest daughter,
Lilly (a frighteningly good Evan Rachel Wood). So distant
has Jones been from the family that he can't even remember
this granddaughter's name when pressed. But for reasons of
his own, he agrees to track the kidnappers.
What
follows is a harsh look at all sides of 19th Century Western
America. Calling the villains rogue Apaches turns out to be
too simple a dismissal, though their leader Chidin (Eric Schweig)
is pure evil through and through. The official forces of justice,
though, have their own complicity in this crime, and screenwriter
Ken Kaufman throws in more than one example of bureaucracy
trumping right.
Director
Howard delivers his purest film effort to date. Previously
only sporadically comfortable with letting his images speak
for themselves, he has a new confidence in The Missing.
Long stretches go without dialogue, and Howard trusts his
actors to do their jobs. In a scene of Maggie stopping to
make Brake's bed before her pursuit of Lilly, the director
allows Blanchett the room to show love and pain in the simple
act of smoothing a cover.
But then,
this is also the best Howard has ever been with actors. Nobody
runs out of control here, not even Schweig in what could have
been a temptingly hammy role. Even the obligatory Clint Howard
cameo feels right - and more impressively, Clint seems like
a normal person here. A couple of other high-profile cameos
appear, and after a brief shock of recognition, these seem
less like stunts and more like wise casting.
Centering
it all is Jones, an actor who has seemed rather bored over
the last several years. He has not seemed this vulnerable
since his turn as Gary Gilmore in The Executioner's Song
back in the seventies. Though he still occasionally turns
on the charm, it's hard to reconcile this guy with the over-the-top
Cesar Romero impersonation in Batman Forever and the
paycheck collecting he did in such crap as Double Jeopardy.
There's pain here. There's a clear inability to fix it. And
sometimes, it's clearly too much for the character to bear,
but he won't let go. Best of all, the film rarely beats us
over the head with it.
Yes,
near the end, Howard does give in a little too much to the
impulse for schmaltz, but it's brief. The film rights itself
soon after. Otherwise, it's a somewhat harsh and spare look
at a rough time, with an ending that will leave some people
unsatisfied, but is still absolutely the right way to go.
Don't
be misled. The Missing is not the feel-good movie for
this Thanksgiving weekend. But it is the best of the major
releases, with one of the most powerful performances of the
year. Sleep off the turkey, then get to a theater to see this.
Rating:
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