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If you've seen Ron Howard's Ransom, you've pretty much already seen his latest, The Missing. Each is about a parent who risks life and limb to rescue their kidnapped child before the last grains of sand filter through the Big Cinematic Hourglass. I remember being fairly near the edge of my seat during Ransom, but I'm older now. Possibly wiser, too. I don't fall for the same middling, by-the-numbers bullshit Howard has been cramming down our throats for years. And with The Missing, Howard is even more middling and by-the-numbers than he's ever been.
The Missing, based on Thomas Eidson's novel The Last Ride, is set in New Mexico during the mid 1880s. Cate Blanchett (Veronica Guerin) plays Maggie Gilkeson, a "healer" with a live-in boyfriend (Aaron Eckhart, The Core) and two daughters fathered by some other guy we never see. The oldest is Lily (Evan Rachel Wood, Thirteen), a prissy girly-girl who can't wait to be old enough to ditch the rural pig-gutting life, while the butch Dot (Jenna Boyd, Dickie Roberts) can't seem to get her hands dirty enough.
Enter a mysterious traveler named Samuel Jones (Tommy Lee Jones, The Hunted), who turns out to be either 1) A wounded guy looking for a doctor; 2) Maggie's real father who took off to bang an Apache chick when she was just a kid; 3) A white dude pretending to be Apache; or 4) All of the above. Words are exchanged and the next day Samuel is sent packing by the still-bitter Maggie. But a scene or two later, Maggie has to swallow her pride and ask Samuel for help. This happens when Lily is abducted by a gang of roving criminals (both Apache and Cracker) who are rounding up hot teenage 'tang in hopes of selling their pert little asses for top dollar once they cross the Mexican border.
The local sheriff doesn't want to help. Neither does the cavalry. So it's just fair-skinned Maggie, her estranged, faux-Indian dad, and little Dot, who insists on tagging along for the big battle against the scary bruja leader of the kidnappers (Eric Schweig, Big Eden). Along the way, all of the typical things happen, including Maggie and Samuel mending their damaged fences and Samuel trying to get all earthy with Dot while Maggie fears introducing her innocent Christian kid to wacky Indian mysticism. Yeah, she's a clueless bigot ("You never know what kind of diseases these Indians have"), but since that was all the rage back then, we can let it slide.
We also get to see what Lily and the other girls have to endure as prisoners. There are near-escapes that lull us into false resolution (unless you have a watch). There are long gunfights with no reloading. And there are a couple of suspenseful scenes, but nothing that suspenseful...because you know it's a Ron Howard Movie while you're watching them. And that means nothing that bad will ever happen. Unless you're a big fan of Dr. Seuss, anyway. And what would a Ron Howard Movie be without Clint Howard? Why, sir, it would be like a John Cusack movie without Jeremy Piven.
Howard's films are always blessed with the presence of at least one acting powerhouse, and he gets it here in the form of Blanchett (sorry, TLJ fans, I'm not convinced he can act, even though this role is a welcome departure from his typical one-note fare). What would the bloated, disastrous How the Grinch Stole Christmas have been without Jim Carrey? How mediocre would the insanely overpraised A Beautiful Mind have been without the powerhouse tandem of Crowe and Connelly? Likewise, The Missing would be just another forgettable picture without the always-solid Blanchett and her turn as Maggie.
2:10 - R for violence
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