The Missing
- Tommy Lee Jones: Samuel Jones ( Chaa - duu -ba -its- iidan )
- Cate Blanchett: Maggie Gilkeson
- Evan Rachel Wood: Lilly Gilkeson
- Jenna Boyd: Dot Gilkeson
- Aaron Eckhart: Brake Baldwin
- Val Kilmer: Lt. Jim Ducharme
- Sergio Calderón: Emiliano
- Eric Schweig: Chidin
- Jay Tavare: Kayitah
The Missing is an American film drama directed by Ron Howard from the year 2003. The plot is based on the novel The Last Ride by Thomas Eidson from the year 1995.
Action
The action takes place in New Mexico in the late 19th century. Maggie Gilkeson lives with her daughters Lilly and Dot from a farm and her work as a healer. She has a relationship with her neighbors Brake Baldwin, who helps her. When her father Samuel Jones comes back, who, when Maggie was still a child, had left his family and lived with the Indians, she throws him out of the house.
A transition from deserting Apache scouts, coat of Brake, the Dot and Lilly accompany to work. Brake is murdered, Lilly kidnapped to be sold in Mexico, along with other kidnapped girls. The local sheriff refuses to take up the pursuit of the Indians. Maggie makes up with Dot and her father, whose help she now accepted but perforce, to the persecution. During the long Ritts father and daughter come gradually closer again.
Two Chiricahua who come to the aid of the three are involved in the following battles. Maggie and her father manage to free the girls and to decimate the Apaches, however, be followed by the remains of the gang. On a rocky plateau, there is a showdown between the liberators and their pursuers; Samuel dies, Maggie brings her daughters and the other rescued girls home.
Reviews
Richard Schickel praised on 17 November 2003 at www.time.com (published in the print edition of TIME on 24 November 2003 ) the presentation of Maggie Gilkeson by Cate Blanchett. The atypical as Western movie remember the works of James Fenimore Cooper. He also bein hold mystical elements such as the magic of the shaman Chidin.
Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote on 19 November 2003 in Entertainment Weekly that the film lacks the soul, but praised Cate Blanchett.
Kenneth Turan wrote in the Los Angeles Times of 26 November 2003 that the film WOULD dark and menacing. He praised the intensity of the representations of Tommy Lee Jones and Cate Blanchett.
Peter Korte called the film in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on 7 February 2004 as a " respectable late offshoot of the genre ." His "look at the realities of the West" was sober, his "physical directness convincing". However, there arises a feeling that the main characters " belonged in another film that you would rather have seen."
Cristina Nord wrote in the TAZ of 7 February 2004, the film fill " old wine in beautiful hoses; not only his Indians act like out of mothballs the 19th century ". The " gentle modernization" of the genre had " strange displacements result: Maggie about is the back-projection of a modern, tough, professionally single mom; her father looks like a New Age, and indignity grizzled hippie ".
Awards
The film participated in the 2004 Berlin Film Festival as part contest entry, which Ron Howard was nominated for the Golden Bear. Cate Blanchett, Jenna Boyd and the film for Best Thriller 2004 were nominated for the Saturn Award. Jenna Boyd won the 2004 Young Artist Award; Evan Rachel Wood was nominated for the Young Artist Award. James Horner was nominated in 2004 for a Golden Satellite Award.
Background
The film was shot in New Mexico in the months of February to June 2003. Its production costs amounted to about 65 million U.S. dollars; he played in the U.S. cinemas a 27 million U.S. dollars.