There's a pretty good Western hidden somewhere amid the extraneous scenes, unnecessary characters and adoring shots of the New Mexico wilderness, but Howard didn't have the heart to cut his movie.
Comment
11/28/03
The Missing (2003)
59
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:166
Fresh:98
Rotten:68
Average Rating:6.1/10
Consensus: An expertly acted and directed Western. But like other Ron Howard features, the movie is hardly subtle.
Runtime: 2 hrs 34 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Director Ron Howard, who impressed audiences with BACKDRAFT (1991) and A BEAUTIFUL MIND (2001), has outdone himself with THE MISSING, a wrenching family drama that unfolds in the midst of a classic... [More]
Starring: Tommy Lee Jones, Cate Blanchett, Evan Rachel Wood, Eric Schweig
Director: Ron Howard
Reviews for The Missing
The movie often works against its own best interests.
11/28/03
Where The Searchers challenged assumptions and attitudes still current in 1956, Howard's film embraces, if not panders to, politically correct current attitudes…
11/28/03
Ron Howard's answer to 'The Searchers' is a tone poem -- whose tone has gone disastrously, horribly wrong.
11/28/03
A movie is only as good as its villain, so they say, and the new film The Missing has a particularly lousy one.
11/27/03
The elements of popular entertainment are in place, but there's frustration in the failure of the script to delve further into issues it raises, but never really explores.
11/26/03
Jones admirably steers clear of the pitfalls of what could potentially be a preposterous (and borderline offensive) character.
11/26/03
A mixed-genre mutt that cribs liberally from John Ford to fashion a tale of families battling the elements, the frontier, and each other.
11/26/03
Didn't exactly remain ingrained in my mind as I walked out the door... but it was enjoyable enough to sit through.
11/26/03
After 130 minutes on the trail, all that I saw was an ending that Roy Rogers could live with--and his westerns were about half as long and far less pretentious.
11/26/03
The performances are great, the chemistry between the two leads is very good, and Ron Howard again proves himself a slick hand behind the camera. But like a lot of these power-packed pictures, there's just something missing.
11/26/03
Reminds us, once again, that the western remains a viable and exciting genre.
11/26/03
If only it didn’t waste so much time employing all the classic sounds, images, characterizations and motivations in its efforts to pretend to be a Western.
11/26/03
In The Missing, Ron Howard somehow makes a great movie and an awful movie, all at the same time.
11/26/03
The Missing hews in every way to the conventions of its genre.
11/26/03
An admirably solid effort.
11/26/03
Though intelligent and well-crafted, the film suffers from Ron Howard's fundamental sense of decorum and concern for his viewers' tender sensibilities.
11/26/03
an epic . . . that doesn’t traffic in the supposed romance of the Old West, but one that does capture its sweep, its mythos and its particular, hard-edged brand of mysticism
11/26/03
At once racially fearful, and anxiously apologetic, patriarchal and post-feminist, pacifist and trigger-happy -- The Missing is engaged in one big, long desert showdown with itself.
11/26/03
OK, I've never ridden in a stagecoach, but the grim Western The Missing made me feel like I was taking a coach trip: It's worthwhile, but there are dull patches, as well as a lot of lurching and wandering off-course.
11/26/03
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