Missing | Jack Lemmon, Sissy Spacek

Missing | Jack Lemmon, Sissy Spacek | Drive a Stake through Pinochet's Heart!

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Missing

	Missing Jack Lemmon, Sissy Spacek Universal Pictures, 2004 average customer review:based on 65 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A u.S. Businessman and his daughter-in-law search chile for his left-wing journalist son. Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (mca) Release Date: 11/23/2004 Starring: Jack Lemmon John Shea Run time: 122 minutes Rating: Pg Director: Costa-gavras

Brilliantly Acted

The first 2 reviews are excellent; so with regards to content and details I have nothing to add. So I thought I'd take a different approach. With regards to the performances in this film, they are simply stunning - this made for a powerful piece of cinema...

In this day of CGI-made films, focus groups choosing endings, studios picking people for roles based on revenue, movies with parts II, III, IV, etc, this is a throwback to real cinema. Similarly, No Country for Old Men qualifies as a modern day masterpiece - when the acting is brilliant, and there's a good story we have a recipe for a fantastic film.

Sadly this film is not just fiction: it is about a topic which is all too real. A sad comment on repressive regimes and the complexities and dangers of supporting regimes for political reasons. More than that, the personal story illustrates it more powerfully perhaps that a documentary ever could. And I am a huge fan of documentaries.

This review is not a detailed one, it is mostly my personal experience and thoughts on how this film affected me - it has no info with respect to the Criterion release - it is an appeal in support of one of my favorite films of all time.

My only quibble would be that Criterion has already announced pre-releases for their first Bluray discs in November - my impatient nature wants a Bluray release (especially because I like this film so much) but then again a fine piece of cinema like this would not NEED the added visual appeal to enhance the power of the film. I just want it anyway...because I want the experience of this film to be at it's possible best.

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Drive a Stake through Pinochet's Heart!

Charles Horman, the young man whose "disappearance" following the murderous right-wing coup in Chile is the subject of this powerful film, was a classmate and friend of mine at Harvard College. After graduation, I didn't keep in touch with Charlie. In fact, the first I heard of his fate at the hands of the butcher Pinochet was when this movie was released. Needless to say, it was the most traumatic experience I've ever had at the cinema. I'm thrilled to see that a new print is about to be released, and I'll pre-order it immediately.

Ironically, one of the other young men at Harvard in the early 1960s was the son of Milton Friedman, the University of Chicago economist whose economic dogma of absolutist capitalist had almost as much to do with the death of Charles Horman and of the thousands of others who "disappeared" into CIA files and unmarked mass graves in Chile, Argentina, and Brazil. I can't remember for sure whether Charlie, David Friedman, and I ever argued about politics/economics as a threesome, but if we did, it would have cast Charlie as the moderate. Moderation and human decency were the qualities most remembered about Charles Horman among his friends and acquaintances at Harvard. Rather few of us foresaw that Friedman's 'neo-liberal' economics, now known as neo-conservatism, would become the intellectual justification of decades of terror-based tyranny in Latin America just as much as for the rise of Reaganomics and the attempt by GW Bush to build a new global free-market Iraq not wanted by Iraqis. This story is well told in the recent book "The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism" by Naomi Klein. If the movie "Missing" made an impression on you, wait till you read the book!

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Shock and Awe: the First Round

Charles Horman, the young man whose "disappearance" following the murderous right-wing coup in Chile is the subject of this powerful film, was a classmate and friend of mine at Harvard College. After graduation, I didn't keep in touch with Charlie. In fact, the first I heard of his fate at the hands of the butcher Pinochet was when this movie was released. Needless to say, it was the most traumatic experience I've ever had at the cinema.

Ironically, one of the other young men at Harvard in the early 1960s was the son of Milton Friedman, the University of Chicago economist whose economic dogma of absolutist capitalist had almost as much to do with the death of Charles Horman and of the thousands of others who "disappeared" into CIA files and unmarked mass graves in Chile, Argentina, and Brazil. I can't remember for sure whether Charlie, David Friedman, and I ever argued about politics/economics as a threesome, but if we did, it would have cast Charlie as the moderate. Moderation and human decency were the qualities most remembered about Charles Horman among his friends and acquaintances at Harvard. Rather few of us foresaw that Friedman's 'neo-liberal' economics, now known as neo-conservatism, would become the intellectual justification of decades of terror-based tyranny in Latin America just as much as for the rise of Reaganomics and the attempt by GW Bush to build a new global free-market Iraq not wanted by Iraqis. This story is well told in the recent book "The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism" by Naomi Klein. If the movie "Missing" made an impression on you, wait till you read the book!

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BASED ON A TRUE STORY

Missing
The true, unsolved story of the disappearance of US journalist Charles Horman in Chile, gives Jack Lemmon the best role in his career. Lemmon plays Ed Horman whose son Charlie, was a somewhat radical writer living in Chile with his wife, Joyse, at the time of the 1973 coup when President Allende was butchered and his struggling government overthrown.
Young Horman was suspicious about the number of top-ranking American Military Officials staying in Chile at the time and could only assume the worst. Noy long afterward Horman vanished, apparently another man who knew too much. This was COSTA GRAVAS FIRST AMERICAN MOVIE.

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This film is truly missing something...

I know that my opinion is in the minority here, but `Missing' was not the film I was hoping to see. It draws similarities to last years `A Mighty Heart' but it has almost the complete opposite set of detractions. I was really put off by `A Mighty Hearts' chaotic pacing (which I tend to believe was a result of trying to convey the chaos of the situation) and found that I couldn't really invest myself in the film as deeply as I wanted to. With `Missing' I felt the opposite was happening. The film suffers from almost no chaos. It just kind of remains stagnant and causes my interest to wane considerably.

The story behind `Missing' is one of intrigue. It follows Beth and Ed Horman as they pressure the government to find their missing husband/son. Charlie Horman, a journalist, was in South America (where he lived with this wife) when he went missing, and the local authorities do not seem to want to lend a helping hand as Beth and Ed struggle to find him.

What I will say about the film is that script was constructed very well. The political corruption that stilted the discovery of Charles whereabouts is brilliantly handled and given ample attention. The relationship between Beth and Ed is also given just treatment, for they are seen as real people and not characters on a screen. This being a true story, it is important that there be an honesty to the situations and activities, and you can feel that in `Missing'. I won't say that the pacing hinders the film entirely, for there are moments within the film where the pulled back delivery works well, but the entire film should not feel that way. A little more attention to that detail could have lifted this film from a merely passable drama to a tightly woven drama.

Another quarrel that I have is with Jack Lemmon. I personally adore this actor and feel that almost everything he has touched has been fantastic. This was not one of those moments for me. I didn't feel as though his confliction was believable. He felt almost uncomfortable, and that discomfort didn't read well on the screen. When I first saw this film I thought that maybe I just didn't like Lemmon as a dramatic actor, but that's not the case, for his performances in films like `The China Syndrome' and `Short Cuts' were impeccable to say the least. Here though I just saw him acting as apposed to living.

Like `A Mighty Heart' though, `Missing' rises on the wings if it's female lead. Sissy Spacek is effortlessly captivating as Beth. Her performance captures everything that Lemmon could not, delivering a real living breathing wife trying desperately to find answers. Spacek is a phenomenal actress, and this is one of her finest performances.

In the end I have to say that `Missing' did not deliver all that it should have. I know that I am not in the majority when I say that, for most of the reviews for this film are on the four and five star range. Maybe they are seeing something that I am not; well, obviously they are. To say that I just don't appreciate a slow moving drama would be missing the point (some of my favorite films are slower paced and brooding like `In the Bedroom' or the recently reviewed `The Door in the Floor') because to slow a film down to create a mood is one thing, but there comes a point where your pace can effect your audiences interest, and if that is not taken into account then one can become bored and eventually sever all emotional connection to a film. You have to learn when to speed things up and when to pull things back. There's compromise and give and take in everything; especially filmmaking.

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