The Missing

Reviewed by EWAN McDONALD

Herald rating * * *

Ron Howard — the all-American kid, Ritchie Cunningham, from the all-American sitcom, Happy Days, who has grown up to become one of Hollywood's most bankable and influential movie-makers — turns his hand to America's most enduring movie theme, the Western.

Recent years have not been kind to the traditional horse opera, perhaps since it was hijacked by the Italians in the 70s. Clint Eastwood, another Hollywood icon, revived the genre with his 1992 Oscar-winner, Unforgiven, but it's been a rough ride. A long haul, in fact, since John Ford's 1956 classic, The Searchers, was declared the most influential movie in American history.

Coincidentally, that is the movie that Howard references, borrows from, and has all but remade here. Curiously, his film had a better reception from non-American critics than it did at home. Some went so far as to say that it will be remembered as his finest film. Stateside and international audiences overlooked it; e.g.'s recommendation is, don't make the same mistake.

We are in New Mexico in 1885. A mysterious stranger, Jones (Tommy Lee Jones), arrives at the small farm where Maggie (Cate Blanchette, pictured), a widow with two daughters, raises cattle with her partner (Aaron Eckhart). Maggie has a reputation among the locals as a healer.

Jones turns out to be Maggie's father, who abandoned his family to live among the Apaches. Dot (Jenna Boyd, the No 2 granddaughter), is excited to find her long-lost grandpa. Lilly (Evan Rachel Wood) is not so enthralled because all she wants to do is leave the ranch.

When Lilly is kidnapped by Apaches bent on taking her across the border to sell her into white slavery, Maggie, Jones and Dot begin a desperate chase that will take them through snow, deserts, mountains, floods and skirmishes.

Those who have seen or read the original story will know that the hunters become the hunted. They will meet eccentric characters and encounter frightening situations. Those who they would expect to help — the marshal, the Army — won't.

Behind the excellent performances of the two leads, one wonders whether the previously bland and flag-waving Howard might, at 50, have found a disturbing and courageous voice that is saying something about the America that he observes today?

He talks about his motivations in a series of interviews featured on the DVD, tipping his 10-gallon hat to John Ford, revealing his embarrassment over his country's treatment of Native Americans, and unveiling three short movies he made as a kid with his brother. There are two versions of an alternative ending that might have worked better than the final option, five deleted scenes and a the usual collection of out-takes.

Trivia: the last words of the movie, "Let's go home", are also the last words of The Searchers. Howard acted in Westerns alongside John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart in The Shootist (1976) and Lee Marvin in The Spikes Gang (1974).

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