The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

I know that Clint Howard is cast in each of brother Ronnie's films but I never knew he also had all those other relatives who write perfect 10 reviews. My only guess is that the reviewer who wrote that it was "...the best western ever made." has never seen any films made pre-2000. How an actual film lover/reviewer could rate this above: High Noon, Outlaw Josie Whales, Fort Apache, The Searchers (The real one), True Grit, Jeremiah Johnson, Unforgiven, Winchester 73, They died with their boots on, Magnificent Seven!!! and on and on and......is beyond my comprehension. As I said, not the worst, but COME ON MAN!!!

I have always loved westerns, since I started watching them back in the 1940's, and this one is entertaining. Cate Blanchett who for my money can hold her own with the very best actors currently working, and even a few legends like Katherine Hepburn, who she once so ably portrayed in The Aviator. And Tommy Lee Jones, who is a natural fit for the western genre, both combine their talents to make this very watchable, although the plot is somewhat predictable, and rather slow paced. Still, the character studies are worth the viewing, and there is enough action to satisfy the formula. Val Kilmer and others lend valuable support, although in Kilmer's case I cannot help but hear Doc Holiday in his drawl. This one slipped by me when it first appeared in theaters, and I'm glad to catch up with it at last. Worth your while, if you like solid acting, and western films.

The Missing (2003)A great cast, and great casting, make for the best core of the movie which eventually boils down to a rather well done Western. When you talk about a Western—as in the genre of movies known as Westerns— you probably picture a certain kind of plot, landscape, range of characters, and even morality. How do you make a Western now that avoids the clichés? Well, it's hard. That's one reason they faded away in the 1960s as they became parodies of themselves (not always on purpose) or exercises in excess (sometimes to superb effect, as in "The Wild Bunch" and "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly" genre). Recent Westerns tend to heighten their realism to a level less common earlier, with more brutal violence, more vivid location shooting, and a kind of acting that pulls out all the stops. The recent "True Grit" remake shows how different movies with the same plot can be. And "The Missing" is a very well made contemporary Western that doesn't escape all these pre-qualifications. And that's it's biggest downfall. It does introduce a contemporary idea into late 19th Century society—sex slave trade across the border. I don't know if this was really going on then, but it is meant to be a comment on how it happening now. It makes it really brutal and ugly, of course, and you sympathize fully.But the movie continues some dangerous clichés—the wild Indian, the naive Mexicans, the innocent hard-working pioneer families (wearing crosses), and the loner on his horse who will save the day. The loner is at first unlikely—Tommy Lee Jones—but he's really good. The rest of the cast is fine, sometimes excellent, but trapped (as is Jones) by having to fill stereotypical roles with an added wart or twitch. It's generally watchable, but sadly old hat.There is an aspect here that's truly insulting--at least to the politically correct, or the correct (to avoid that cliché). To repeat the maligning attributes that we have to assume were common but not universal of all these kinds of people is just mean and a little dumb. It makes the movie far less that it could have been.

Ron Howard directs Cate Blanchett, Tommy Lee Jones, Evan Rachel Wood, and Val Kilmer in "The Missing," a 2003 western.Cate Blanchett plays Maggie Gilkeson, a medical woman in 1885 New Mexico, where she lives with her daughters and a ranch hand Brake (Aaron Eckhart), who is also her lover. One day, her father Samuel (Tommy Lee Jones) shows up after 20 years. She wants nothing to do with him as he left the family to go live with the Indians.He finally gets the message and takes off, only to become drunk in town and land in jail. Meanwhile, Maggie's daughter Lily has been kidnapped and Brake murdered, apparently by Indians. Unable to get help from the sheriff, Maggie reluctantly has her father released from jail and asks for his help in finding her daughter.Lily and other girls have been kidnapped with the intention of selling them into prostitution. The kidnappers are a combination of renegade Indians and whites who are working with them. Maggie, her father, and her young daughter, who refuses to be left behind, set out on their trail.Glorious-looking film that points up the brutality of life in the west, as well as the filth, and the strength that people had to have to survive. A woman had to be able to use a rifle, hunt, skin a deer, and do all the things that the men had to do.My understanding is that this film bombed; I'm not sure why. It has wonderful performances and no expense was spared, and also, as far as the violence, seems realistic.Cate Blanchett gives a magnificent performance as Maggie, a determined woman made of steel, who doesn't care what her father does for her - she still hates him. Tommy Lee Jones is a no-nonsense faux Indian (he might be part-Indian - this isn't made clear, but it seems unlikely) who knows his way around and believes in all the Indian lore. In one striking scene, Maggie becomes extremely ill -- according to Samuel, the brujo (Indian witch) put a curse on her. He calls in one of the Indians helping them to break the spell; meanwhile, her daughter reads the Bible out loud."The Missing" is reminiscent of "The Searchers" but here, the relationship between Samuel and Maggie goes a little deeper than thqt of Martin and Ethan. Maggie slowly moves from dislike to an uneasy alliance to a limited understanding of Samuel and finally, acceptance and gratitude, even if it's without total understanding. For Samuel, he is doing what he was told to do by a medicine man -- return to his family and protect them.Truly excellent film, an old-fashioned western in many ways, intertwined with a strong relationship story and suspense.