The movie often works against its own best interests.
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11/28/03
The Missing (2003)
59
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:166
Fresh:98
Rotten:68
Average Rating:6.1/10
Consensus: An expertly acted and directed Western. But like other Ron Howard features, the movie is hardly subtle.
Runtime: 2 hrs 34 mins
Genre: Dramas
US Box Office: $26,811,707
Synopsis: Director Ron Howard, who impressed audiences with BACKDRAFT (1991) and A BEAUTIFUL MIND (2001), has outdone himself with THE MISSING, a wrenching family drama that unfolds in the midst of a classic... [More]
Starring: Tommy Lee Jones, Cate Blanchett, Evan Rachel Wood, Eric Schweig
Director: Ron Howard
Reviews for The Missing
61 - 80 (sorted by date; Australian critics are listed first)
Where The Searchers challenged assumptions and attitudes still current in 1956, Howard's film embraces, if not panders to, politically correct current attitudes…
11/28/03
Ron Howard's answer to 'The Searchers' is a tone poem -- whose tone has gone disastrously, horribly wrong.
11/28/03
It's an entertaining and gripping film, with stunning production values and magnetic performances. And yet the script's continual pandering to Hollywood cliches lets it down.
11/27/03
A movie is only as good as its villain, so they say, and the new film The Missing has a particularly lousy one.
11/27/03
The elements of popular entertainment are in place, but there's frustration in the failure of the script to delve further into issues it raises, but never really explores.
11/26/03
Jones admirably steers clear of the pitfalls of what could potentially be a preposterous (and borderline offensive) character.
11/26/03
A mixed-genre mutt that cribs liberally from John Ford to fashion a tale of families battling the elements, the frontier, and each other.
11/26/03
Didn't exactly remain ingrained in my mind as I walked out the door... but it was enjoyable enough to sit through.
11/26/03
After 130 minutes on the trail, all that I saw was an ending that Roy Rogers could live with--and his westerns were about half as long and far less pretentious.
11/26/03
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.
11/26/03
Reminds us, once again, that the western remains a viable and exciting genre.
11/26/03
If only it didn’t waste so much time employing all the classic sounds, images, characterizations and motivations in its efforts to pretend to be a Western.
11/26/03
In The Missing, Ron Howard somehow makes a great movie and an awful movie, all at the same time.
11/26/03
Top CriticThe Missing hews in every way to the conventions of its genre.
11/26/03
Top CriticAn admirably solid effort.
11/26/03
Top CriticThough intelligent and well-crafted, the film suffers from Ron Howard's fundamental sense of decorum and concern for his viewers' tender sensibilities.
11/26/03
an epic . . . that doesn’t traffic in the supposed romance of the Old West, but one that does capture its sweep, its mythos and its particular, hard-edged brand of mysticism
11/26/03
At once racially fearful, and anxiously apologetic, patriarchal and post-feminist, pacifist and trigger-happy -- The Missing is engaged in one big, long desert showdown with itself.
11/26/03
OK, I've never ridden in a stagecoach, but the grim Western The Missing made me feel like I was taking a coach trip: It's worthwhile, but there are dull patches, as well as a lot of lurching and wandering off-course.
11/26/03
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