Missing, The

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

The combined intensity of these two performances (Jones and Blanchett) obliterates objections and raises the stakes in what might otherwise have been a standard western.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Has Blanchett and Jones to its credit. To watch them is to take in two of the screen's greatest natural wonders.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Good movie westerns these days may be too few and far between, but Ron Howard's The Missing is almost a great one.

Time Richard Schickel

As for Blanchett, she's simply wonderful. She has played her share of queenly figures, but her acting essence is, emotionally speaking, plain-Jane. She's a straight shooter, with an uncanny ability to find a character's spine and communicate it without fuss or feathers.

Empire Kim Newman

Probably the best Western since "Unforgiven."

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Ron Howard has delivered a movie that’s a big departure from his previous film, "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas." We may not remember him for "The Alamo," but we're glad he kept the Stetson.

USA Today Mike Clark

This movie will remind a lot of people of John Ford's masterpiece, "The Searchers," without the rowdy humor and, yes, without the greatness. But it's an admirably solid effort that's as mean as it has to be, which is plenty.

Premiere Sara Brady

Howard’s inclination toward graphic, gruesome violence, reminiscent of Ransom’s grisly denouement, The Missing is, at its core, a story well-told and built upon the solid foundation of Blanchett’s supremely capable performance.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Does not surpass Kevin Costner's "Open Range" for the title of Best Western of 2003, but it's a worthy effort and makes for an enjoyable (if slightly overlong) two-plus hours.

New York Post Megan Lehmann

Ironically, what's lacking in Howard's stark, often brutal, late 19th-century chase drama is emotional punch.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Just misses being great. The dark shaman mysticism doesn't entirely mesh with the earthbound quest across the wild and glorious Southwest. And the ending, with its shoot-outs and sacrifices, has a choppy, unneccessarily complicated feel.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Ron Howard has never before made a picture this raw and alive. At the same time, this tale of the desperate pursuit of the kidnappers of young women makes for a fundamentally grim and unpleasant experience.

The New Yorker David Denby

Improbable and, at times, sadistic, but, considered as a piece of direction, this Western, set in New Mexico in 1885, is as confident as anything that Ron Howard has done. [8 December 2003, p. 139]

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The only thing they don't take time for is characterization, which the story badly needs.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

The movie runs into its deepest trouble with its depiction of Lilly's captors. After years of Hollywood wooden Indians and a more recent run of tribal angels (as in "Dances With Wolves"), movies like "The Last of the Mohicans" have acknowledged the historical truth that Native Americans could be as bloody-minded as their white conquerors.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Ron Howard somehow makes a great movie and an awful movie, all at the same time.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Ron Howard somehow makes a great movie and an awful movie, all at the same time.

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

This murky, thriller-tinged Western has the terrain down cold -- from the wide-open spaces to the rocky vistas -- but beneath all the requisite genre trappings there's a vast, empty gulch where the affecting dramatic element should have been found.

Film Threat Clint Morris

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.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

You can believe this man (Jones) left his family because he felt born into the wrong tribe. Now if only he had picked the right movie . . .

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Born to play a Western hero, Jones sells the film's syrupy message with a soulful, wounded performance, relieved at times by his agreeably cantankerous sense of humor.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

What's missing in The Missing -- despite throwing in The Everything, from magic trinkets to group hugs -- is soul.

Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan

Judging by the beautiful photography of Salvatore Totino, Howard knows what a Western should look like. But the thrills suggested by the trailers, in which the picture is presented almost like a frightening supernatural horror story, are nowhere to be seen.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Can't be dismissed. Yet something keeps this movie from being completely satisfying: a disconnect between the plot and the point.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The bones of a great Western remain barely visible under the layer of mush he and screenwriter Ken Kaufman smooth over them, reminders of the viciously memorable film that might have been.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

A clunky Western that tries so hard to be Politically Correct that although young women are kidnapped by Indians to be sold into prostitution in Mexico, they are never molested by their captors.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

While it roots the heroine's compassion in her Christian beliefs, it suggests Indian occultism is equally powerful. And the last third is a lackluster barrage of stalking, shooting, and fighting. Too bad the movie doesn't ride into its own sunset about an hour earlier.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The Missing is so dour it makes you wonder why they didn't all just pack up and go back East.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

It might better be titled The Awkward.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Watching her (Blanchett) and Jones work together is the chief pleasure of this polished but self-conscious drama--Howard delivers some terse and coherent suspense sequences, but Ford looms over the story like a rifleman hidden in the red rock.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

However bogged down by predictable story rhythms, banally assembled shoot-outs, and climactic mano a mano, The Missing has an acidic period tone, a respect for the reality of violence, and a refreshing dearth of superhuman heroics and easy triumph. For that much, we should be grateful.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

It's a big snooze because we can't take the main characters seriously.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

What neither Howard nor his screenwriter, Ken Kaufman, seem to realize is that The Missing is that much bleaker and more unsettling when its horrors spring forth from the land itself and from the souls of wayward men.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

It's crisp, efficient, well-made and strangely, vaguely dull.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

Nearly 50 years after John Ford's "Searchers" we have arrived at a point in film history when the movie industry can offer a less sophisticated version of the same material.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The movie also has a supernatural element: the leader of the renegades (Eric Schweig) turns out to be a sorcerer with occult powers. It's very clumsy, and speaks to the pandering streak in Howard that has always prevented him from being a truly first-rate film artist.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

If you're able to take The Missing seriously, as I was not, you'll be impressed by its sweep and ambition. The most lasting impression it made on me was one of absurd overreaching.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

The only thing The Missing isn't missing is a handful of climaxes, all of them of the anti- variety that leave you believing, then praying the movie's over a good 30 minutes before its actual and inevitable finale.

Slate David Edelstein

It's a schlock melodrama dolled up in arty frontier vestments.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

The movie is an unpleasant slog, the gruesomeness working in concert with humorlessness to lend the whole picture a queasy deadliness.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Even Cate Blanchett can't save this misbegotten horse opera.