With an all new commentary from director Ron Howard and 17 minutes cut back into the film, The Missing: Extended Cut is worth the double dip for fans already owning the 2004 DVD release and is worth watching if you have never seen the movie.
The film is an excellent blending of the western genre with that of a suspense thriller, and stars talented actors Cate Blanchett and Tommy Lee Jones (a natural for any western role). The film also features strong performances from Evan Rachel Wood and Jenna Boyd as Blanchett’s daughters.
The Missing (which at times seems like Howard is paying homage to John Ford’s masterpiece The Searchers) blends the story of an estranged father and daughter relationship to tell a thrilling story about a mother searching for her daughter who was kidnapped by a band of renegades. The movie takes place in New Mexico and features beautiful panoramic photography shot by cinematographer Salvatore Toti (who Howard also used on Cinderella Man and The Da Vinci Code).
The movie starts off slowly and Howard does a good job early on showing the difficulties of living in the old west. The audience is introduced to Maggie Gilkeson (Blanchett) - a single mother raising two daughters who earns her living on a small ranch that she works with her boyfriend Brake (Aaron Eckhart). She also gets work as a local “healer” - Howard opens the movie with an example of how rough medicine was in the time period. It is a hard life, and her older daughter Lilly (Wood) wants nothing more than to flee the farm for the modern city.
The family’s world is turned upside down when Samuel Jones (Jones) shows up asking Brake for the services of the healer. Unknown to Brake, Jones is Maggie’s real father, but the two have not seen each other since he abandoned his family years ago. He is now more Indian than white man, and Blanchett wants nothing to do with him. When Lilly is kidnapped and Brake killed, Maggie immediately believes it was Jones that did the crime - her younger daughter Dot (Boyd) witness the attack and says it was Indians. After Jones turns out to be innocent, the two set out together to find Lilly, and to try to bring her back home alive.
The movie then begins to truly mix between being a thriller set in the old west and a drama about this damaged relationship between father and daughter. Howard makes sure to pack his film with some chilling moments, and the renegades’ leader (an evil medicine man called Pesh-Chidin) can be downright scary at times. The band is made up of white men and Indians (Howard compares them to a biker gang in the commentary), and there is clearly nothing redeemable about any of them.
Jones and Blanchett do a great job with the father/daughter aspects of the story
Howard uses the band and the Pesh-Chidin character to keep the tension and suspense building throughout the movie. The characters are truly evil (they have no remorse or second thoughts when one kidnapped woman’s baby dies) and kill almost for sport. The Pesh-Chidin character seems to truly hate everything about the white man, and expresses that hatred violently when he is confronted by Jones (a white man wanting to be an Indian). The character doesn’t want Jones’ money for the girl, but wants his soul instead.
Even as the film’s main plot builds the suspense, Howard uses the film’s subplot between Jones and Blanchett to explore this damaged relationship and how it relates to their world. Not only does Blanchett have a hatred for Jones for abandoning her, but he has also become an Indian – a race that she has nothing but disdain for. Howard examines this hatred in scenes where Jones tries to give Dot a charm necklace or a pair of moccasins. Blanchett is accepting of her father’s help because she needs him to save Lilly, but there is clearly no love there. As the movie progresses, a relationship does naturally begin to grow, but it is never easy.
Jones’ feelings for Blanchett are even harder to read. When he first comes to her, he wants to give her money to make up for abandoning her years ago. He agrees to help her find Lilly since she refused to take the money. Later, we find out that Jones’ real motive for helping is because he was bit by a rattlesnake and a medicine man told him he had to do this to get well. When Maggie objects to this reason, Jones simply replies that a rattlesnake can poison your soul. It makes perfect sense to him. Howard shows the character’s distance to the family in scenes where Jones is attacked by U.S. troops (they think he is an Indian) and he can’t even come up with his granddaughters name as his excuse. Again, it does seem that a true relationship between father and daughter begins to develop by the film’s ending.
I really enjoyed the movie, and Howard did a great job at creating a western that was true to the time period (he discusses how much research went into the film in commentary), but also held its own against the modern idea of a suspense thriller. The film does have some flaws. Parts of the movie drag on a bit, and the renegades (with the exception of Pesh-Chidin) tend to be a little less developed. The movie also has a weak ending with the final shootout feeling too “Hollywood” and like Howard didn’t have a clear way to end the film (the original DVD release had three alternate endings).
The Extended Cut does feature 17 minutes of noticeable difference cut back into the movie. The footage includes more time spent at the beginning of the movie when Jones is first re-united with Maggie (he shoots a “coyote” at the home, but claims it was something more, Blanchett watches him through a window, etc.), and there is more bonding scenes between the two characters cut back into the film (such as Maggie looking at Jones’ art book and discussing him being an art student before coming to New Mexico). With that said, the original DVD release had 11 deleted scenes as part of its special features, and I am not certain if that makes up the new extended footage cut back into the film. I am sure some of it probably does come from those extra features, but it has been too long since I saw the original DVD release for me to be certain.
The Missing combines elements of the western genre with a suspense thriller
The DVD also comes with some decent special features of its own including a new commentary from Howard, a six part featurette with Howard, and three short films by the director. Sadly, it does not contain the three alternate endings that were part of the special features on the first release. The DVD is presented in 2.40:1 widescreen with 5.1 Dolby Digital sound.
The six part featurette is a bit of a repeat of some of the things said by Howard in the commentary, and features the director talking about his love of westerns (The Searchers is one of his favorites), and his experiences working with western icon John Wayne in The Shootist. This is fairly interesting to fans of Howard or westerns, and the entire six part feature isn’t that long at all. The three short films were shot by Howard while he was in college and feature many of his family members in various roles. Even if they don’t have much value, they are a nice little addition to the DVD.
I really enjoyed Howard’s commentary during The Missing. Normally, commentary is a bit of hit or miss with me, but I really got sucked into listing to Howard explain how they shot the movie and the huge amount of research that went into the film. He is a bit sparse at times, but really helps you get a better appreciation for the characters and what they are going through in the film.
Howard does talk about the different lighting elements and camera angles that were used for some of The Missing’s more scenic shots (such as how they mixed camera angles with the natural lighting to make some canyons have a haunted house feeling), but spends more time going into the details of the history for the time period of the film. I found it extremely interesting listening to how the film combined different aspects of the history (such as how the medicine man was created as a combination of different historical accounts from various tribes including down into South America) to help shape the story.
Jones is a natural for this kind of movie
The Missing is a film that I really enjoyed and one that I would highly recommend to any fan of the western genre or anyone wanting a good suspense movie. Howard is a master at filmmaking and knows how to truly craft a great story. The new “Extended Cut” has enough special features and a great commentary to make it worth the double dip. I would highly recommend the movie to anyone who hasn’t taken the time to watch it, and would recommend the new extended version to anyone who enjoyed the movie the first time.
The Missing: Extended Cut is now available at Amazon . As of yet, there is not a release date for the UK. Visit the DVD’s database for more information.
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