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Missing, The
Sony Pictures Entertainment

Missing, The reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 55 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
5.1 out of 10
based on 41 reviews
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How did we calculate this?
based on 23 votes
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MPAA RATING: R for violence

Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Cate Blanchett, Evan Rachel Wood, Jenna Boyd, Aaron Eckhart, Val Kilmer, Clint Howard, and Eric Schweig

This bone-chilling suspense thriller tells the story of Maggie Gilkeson (Blanchett), a young woman raising her two daughters in an isolated and lawless wilderness. When her oldest daughter (Wood) is kidnapped by a psychopathic killer with mystical powers (Schweig), Maggie is forced to re-unite with her long estranged father (Jones) to rescue her. (Sony)


GENRE(S): Drama  |  Suspense/Thriller  |  Western  
WRITTEN BY: Ken Kaufman
Thomas Eidson (novel The Last Ride)
 
DIRECTED BY: Ron Howard  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: February 24, 2004 
Video: February 24, 2004 
Theatrical: November 19, 2003 
RUNNING TIME: minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: USA 

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

90
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.
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90
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.
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88
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.
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80
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.
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80
Empire Kim Newman
Probably the best Western since "Unforgiven."
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78
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.
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75
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.
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75
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.
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75
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.
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75
New York Post Megan Lehmann
Ironically, what's lacking in Howard's stark, often brutal, late 19th-century chase drama is emotional punch.
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75
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.
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70
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.
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70
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]
63
Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
The only thing they don't take time for is characterization, which the story badly needs.
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63
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.
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60
Washington Post Desson Thomson
Ron Howard somehow makes a great movie and an awful movie, all at the same time.
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60
Washington Post Desson Thomson
Ron Howard somehow makes a great movie and an awful movie, all at the same time.
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60
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.
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60
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.
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60
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 . . .
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60
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.
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58
Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
What's missing in The Missing -- despite throwing in The Everything, from magic trinkets to group hugs -- is soul.
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58
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.
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50
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.
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50
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.
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50
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.
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50
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.
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50
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.
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50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
It might better be titled The Awkward.
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50
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.
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50
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.
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50
New York Daily News Jami Bernard
It's a big snooze because we can't take the main characters seriously.
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50
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.
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50
Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
It's crisp, efficient, well-made and strangely, vaguely dull.
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50
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.
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42
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.
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40
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.
40
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.
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30
Slate David Edelstein
It's a schlock melodrama dolled up in arty frontier vestments.
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30
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.
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25
Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Even Cate Blanchett can't save this misbegotten horse opera.
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What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 5.1 (out of 10) based on 23 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

[Anonymous] gave it a7:
A mixed bag, but some scenes are annoyinglyh blunt. Not much of a story, but interesting how they deal witht he situation, and how she makes peace with her father.

G.M. D.K. gave it an8:
Very entertaining. Slightly predictable but yet a very good film in overall.

Pat C. gave it a 2:
Blanchett once again proves she can play any character, and Tommy Lee's always fun to watch. As for the plot, it depends on one inept action after another, so the continuity is increasingly dumbed down. The politically correct banter about the responsibilities of fatherhood is promising but doesn't go anywhere. The disposable boyfriend Blanchett's character is initially shacked up with is more reminiscent of Woody Allen-style domestic insecurity than frontier life. And the shaman slave trader is a cross between Castenada's Don Juan and Chucky. But it's told in Howard's engaging style, so one must wait till the very end before concluding this photoplay is a bossload of b.s.

Mauricio R. gave it a 4:
I've seen it in Uruguay, i'm from there and i didn't like it, it was a very boring movie, sorry for TMJ ann Kate, i thought that something in the movie was missing...ZZZZZ.

Ben A. gave it a 6:
This was actually better than I thought. Well acted, well directed even. I didn't like the whole evil Indian thing; that's overdone and not accurate. I didn't like how they threw in the supernatural stuff an hour and a half into the movie. Nice scenery and cinematography. Overall: rather mediocre.

Douglas H. gave it a 4:
Very disappointed... Ron Howard's worst movie.

Kari Ann T. gave it a 1:
Oh dear. What a complete waste of the talent of Cate and Tommy Lee. During the movie, I thought the film had caught on something....not so..I looked over and a fellow movie goer was snoring... this was dreadful. No plot, no character development, poor cinematogrophy, just a big ICK all over. What a shame. What a waste of talent. What a long, drawn out, poorly developed, boring and really, to be honest, stupid movie.

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