SCREEN SCENE: ‘The Missing’ is a compelling Western

Published 4:00 pm Tuesday, December 2, 2003

Broadly speaking, I hate Westerns. Characters are never happy in Westerns. Everyone has a tarnished past or a secret shame that weighs them down, everyone holds a lifelong grudge against someone else. They’ re always working their fingers to the bone, so they’ re exhausted, depressed and irritable. They shoot and kill each other with abandon.

And everyone’ s dirty all the time.

So for a Western to appeal to this moviegoer, it has to be something special. Only the most gifted actors, compelling story and accessible direction could make a Western something I would choose to go see.

With Tommy Lee Jones and Cate Blanchett starring in a chilling drama of loss and redemption and Ron Howard at the helm, “The Missing” won me over. Though it runs a bit long, it succeeds as a thriller, a family drama and a historical epic spotlighting the racial tension between whites and Indians in the 1880s West.

Blanchett is the single mother of teenage Lily and 10-year-old Dot, working hard to make a living as both a rancher and a healer on the New Mexico frontier. Her difficult past rears its head when her estranged father (Jones) appears on her doorstep 30 years after abandoning her and the rest of his family to “go Indian” and live with the Chiricahua Apaches.

Jones is one of the most sincere and interesting actors alive, and his role in “The Missing” is a complex one even for him. His character is treated as an outsider in both the Apache and white cultures. He appears at first gruff and daunting, but viewers quickly learn there is no false exterior hiding this sensitive soul – the gruff and the sensitive go hand in hand in that peculiarly honest Tommy Lee Jones way.

When Blanchett’ s older daughter is kidnapped by a band of renegade Apaches, she has to stifle her animosity toward Jones and ask for his help tracking them down. The U.S. Army blunders onto the scene in one of the film’s few missteps, casting the insufferable Val Kilmer as a Cavalry lieutenant to whom ethics are a matter of convenience.

During the trek to catch up with the kidnappers, which begins in snowy woods and ranges across gypsum flats and rocky canyons, Jones and Blanchett come to find aspects that have been missing in their own lives. Unfortunately, the story gets lopsided toward the end as Blanchett’s frontierswoman strength and resourcefulness take a back seat to Jones’ mystical half-Indian ways.

Director Howard has been making highly watchable movies for more than two decades, and lately some brilliant ones as well. Letting director of photography Salvatore Totino (“Any Given Sunday,” “Changing Lanes”) give character to the fantastic natural sets and allowing his actors to invest their natural talents in their characters, Howard makes “The Missing” a Western worth watching.

“The Missing”Rated – R

for violence

Starring: Cate Blanchett, Tommy Lee Jones

Director: Ron Howard

Length: 130 minutes

Now playing at: Astoria Gateway Cinemas

Short take: Tommy Lee Jones and Cate Blanchett are at their best as an estranged father and daughter in 1880s New Mexico, trying to track down a band of renegade Apaches that has kidnapped Blanchett’s teenage daughter. The incredible vistas and chilling story make this an unusual and watchable Western.

Rating: 3 stars

Rating system:

4 stars: Absolutely the best

3 stars: Good, solid entertainment

2 stars: Wait for the video

1 star: Don’t waste your time

Movie Trivia: Ron Howard’ s brother, Clint, has appeared as a minor character in most of his films. Who’ s the other familiar Howard face in “The Missing?”

Movie Trivia answer: Rance Howard, father of Ron and Clint, plays the telegraph operator.