MOVIE REVIEW
'The Missing' just clunky, unconvincing

By Lawrence Toppman
Knight Ridder Newspapers

THE MISSING (R) Two and a half stars (Fair)

From Kevin Costner's compelling but overlong "Dances With Wolves" to Lawrence Kasdan's well-acted, bulky "Wyatt Earp" to John Lee Hancock's now-postponed version of "The Alamo," filmmakers have contemplated Western vistas and indulged themselves like starving gluttons at a pie-eating contest.

Ron Howard falls prey to this tendency with "The Missing," his adaptation of Thomas Eidson's novel "The Last Ride." Howard and writer Ken Kaufman give us a flood, a suicide, the murder of superfluous characters and a battle that comes right on top of another battle — none of which were in the book. The only thing they don't take time for is characterization, which the story badly needs.

The novel's Sam Jones, a dying giant, rides out of the New Mexico desert as a tragic, lonely figure. He deserted a Caucasian wife and daughter decades ago to seek a native American woman, and now he wants to reconcile with his grown-up child. The movie's Sam is a peppery, unrepentant guy who was advised by a shaman to be nice to his kin as recovery therapy for a rattlesnake bite.

The whole film has that kind of superficiality. The plunging horses and fiery arrows set the pulse racing, but the relationships among the characters don't rouse deep emotions. When the film comes down to its one serious discussion about paternal betrayal, Sam can find no better excuse than fidgety feet. (In the book, he'd married a white woman only because he thought his native bride was dead. When he learned otherwise, he went back to her.)

The rudiments of the story, a western staple that suggests "The Searchers," remain the same. Frontier healer Maggie (Cate Blanchett), who operates from her cabin with wisdom but no medical degree, lives happily with her lover (Aaron Eckhart) and two daughters. Tomboyish Dot (Jenna Boyd) takes to the wilderness, but older sister Lily (Evan Rachel Wood) wants to travel to a more civilized spot.

Lily is kidnapped by a native American, whose white-slave ring rounds up pretty girls to sell across the Mexican border. (He's played by Eric Schweig, whose hideous makeup and beefy frame dispel memories of his Uncas in "The Last of the Mohicans." For the sake of political correctness, he has white sidekicks who were not in the novel.) Now wise old Sam (Tommy Lee Jones) figures he can show his caring side by tracking the slavers and saving Lily and the other captives.

A sharp director of Westerns in the 1950s, such as Anthony Mann or Budd Boetticher, would have shaved half an hour off the running time, told the same story and perhaps also given the characters more personality. Howard, unfettered by the time and budget constraints they faced, allows this slender tale to run on too long.

Blanchett nails the accent, attitude and anger of her character — when doesn't she? — and we feel Maggie's frustration as she sees Dot transfer allegiance from the Christian God to spirits invoked by this "heathen" old reprobate. The weathered Jones has plenty of authority as her father, though he never achieves the ruined grandeur this role ought to have.

Yet he might have, if Howard and Kaufman had spent more time amid the turbulence inside his mind than the tumult outside it. They're so caught up in the authenticity of the action sequences and the stunningly lovely locales that they neglect the more complicated landscape of the heart.

Rated R, with violence.