Memorable, crazy movie

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Can't tell you how hard I tried to like "The Missing Person". Right off the bat, you can see it is an imitation noir, an attempt to recall a bygone era in movies, and they got a down-at-the-heels, alcoholic 'private eye' to be the hero - and being a likable sort, you root for him. The color is not splashy but almost a sepia, two-tone effect that works well with the mood of the picture.However.As noted by several reviewers, it takes forever to get going but then maintains the same slow, plodding pace throughout the film. And the hero, played by Michael Shannon, severely underplays his part and seems to be in a stupor in some scenes, so sluggish does he appear. That may be what the director was looking for, but he is at times in danger of fading into the wallpaper and losing command of what are essentially his scenes. Lastly, too much plot explanation was saved for the final scenes and became almost too much to absorb; It makes you wonder if you got the gist of the story.I hope this was a learning experience for director Buschel and I applaud his effort and concept. I hope he makes more and better pictures. And I hope he is not offended by the fact that a highlight of the movie for me was Thelonious Monk's version of an old standard, "I Don't Stand A Ghost Of A Chance", played over the final credits. It was perfection, a haunting rendition played slowly and using very few fingers.

Life is often far more complicated than a choice between what we think it's right or wrong. There are so many variables in the game of living, that even after the consequences of the actions we are unable to evaluate the results.Once again, Michael Shannon surprises us with an extraordinary interpretation of a dense character. The narrative is linear, but the pieces of the puzzle are put together in the right place and time.Intense darkness and light, irony, sadness, brief fun, every ingredient turns this cocktail into an extraordinary beverage with an exquisite taste.Make no mistake, this is a superior film.

In "The Missing Person," Michael Shannon goes the Bogart route, playing a cynical, booze-soaked private detective who's hoping to find a little redemption in his latest assignment, trailing a man he knows little to nothing about – not even his name. But before long, John discovers that there's much more to this man than meets the eye, and that the two of them are strangely linked to one another through the tragedy of 9/11. In a way, each of them is a "missing person," one in a literal and one in a figurative sense. Indeed, the best thing about "The Missing Person" is that just as you think the movie is about one thing, it turns out to be about something else altogether.This moody, bluesy, boozy movie, written and directed by Noah Buschel and co-starring Amy Adams, is deliberate in its pacing and borderline pretentious in style, with characters who speak in clipped phrases, uttering half-articulated thoughts and hardboiled wisecracks as the details of the story spin themselves out. It may not be for every taste, but the movie hauntingly captures the different but equally intense responses people can have to trauma and loss.

After seeing "Neal Cassady" at the Woodstock Film Festival last year, I was interested to see what young director Noah Buschel would do with the noir genre. I was not disappointed.Like his beat "biopic," Buschel turns the genre right on it's head and makes something completely fresh and new. "The Missing Person" has very little to do with it's surface elements, and much more to do with innovative and original film-making.Michael Shannon delivers his best performance to date. It's him in full movie star wattage. He looks great, he sounds great, and he makes a great damaged hero. The rest of the cast is so superb you almost wish there was more of them in the film.Perhaps the best use of jazz music I've heard in a film.There will be those who want a faster paced movie. More violence and quickness and loudness. They should just watch "Brick." That was a good example of a shallow neo-noir. This is not "Brick." This is a deep and unique film about loss. And also, somehow, a hilarious film about loss.Geoffrey Gilmore, the festival director, introduced "The Missing Person" the night I saw it at Sundance. He said that it was the first film accepted at Sundance this year and that Buschel was doing something no one else was doing right now, which was going back to old forms and making them new again. A lost art, he said. Something that 70's directors used to do a lot.The key point he made was that "The Missing Person" was an utterly unique film in the guise of a noir film. I couldn't agree more.