The Missing
Columbia Pictures | Release Date: November 19, 2003 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
55
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 40 Critic Reviews
Positive:
15
Mixed:
22
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
The Hollywood ReporterMichael Rechtshaffen
This murky, thriller-tinged Western has the terrain down cold -- from the wide-open spaces to the rocky vistas -- but beneath all the requisite genre trappings there's a vast, empty gulch where the affecting dramatic element should have been found. Read full review
80
TimeRichard Schickel
As for Blanchett, she's simply wonderful. She has played her share of queenly figures, but her acting essence is, emotionally speaking, plain-Jane. She's a straight shooter, with an uncanny ability to find a character's spine and communicate it without fuss or feathers. Read full review
70
VarietyTodd McCarthy
Ron Howard has never before made a picture this raw and alive. At the same time, this tale of the desperate pursuit of the kidnappers of young women makes for a fundamentally grim and unpleasant experience. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
What's missing in The Missing -- despite throwing in The Everything, from magic trinkets to group hugs -- is soul. Read full review
75
PremiereSara Brady
Howard’s inclination toward graphic, gruesome violence, reminiscent of Ransom’s grisly denouement, The Missing is, at its core, a story well-told and built upon the solid foundation of Blanchett’s supremely capable performance. Read full review
60
Film ThreatClint Morris
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. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)Peter Rainer
You can believe this man (Jones) left his family because he felt born into the wrong tribe. Now if only he had picked the right movie . . . Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Does not surpass Kevin Costner's "Open Range" for the title of Best Western of 2003, but it's a worthy effort and makes for an enjoyable (if slightly overlong) two-plus hours. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
Good movie westerns these days may be too few and far between, but Ron Howard's The Missing is almost a great one. Read full review
63
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
The only thing they don't take time for is characterization, which the story badly needs. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
The combined intensity of these two performances (Jones and Blanchett) obliterates objections and raises the stakes in what might otherwise have been a standard western. Read full review
50
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
It's crisp, efficient, well-made and strangely, vaguely dull. Read full review
50
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
Nearly 50 years after John Ford's "Searchers" we have arrived at a point in film history when the movie industry can offer a less sophisticated version of the same material. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
Just misses being great. The dark shaman mysticism doesn't entirely mesh with the earthbound quest across the wild and glorious Southwest. And the ending, with its shoot-outs and sacrifices, has a choppy, unneccessarily complicated feel. Read full review
60
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
Born to play a Western hero, Jones sells the film's syrupy message with a soulful, wounded performance, relieved at times by his agreeably cantankerous sense of humor. Read full review
50
Village VoiceMichael Atkinson
However bogged down by predictable story rhythms, banally assembled shoot-outs, and climactic mano a mano, The Missing has an acidic period tone, a respect for the reality of violence, and a refreshing dearth of superhuman heroics and easy triumph. For that much, we should be grateful. Read full review
50
New York Daily NewsJami Bernard
It's a big snooze because we can't take the main characters seriously. Read full review
75
New York PostMegan Lehmann
Ironically, what's lacking in Howard's stark, often brutal, late 19th-century chase drama is emotional punch. Read full review
50
L.A. WeeklyScott Foundas
What neither Howard nor his screenwriter, Ken Kaufman, seem to realize is that The Missing is that much bleaker and more unsettling when its horrors spring forth from the land itself and from the souls of wayward men. Read full review
58
Portland OregonianKim Morgan
Judging by the beautiful photography of Salvatore Totino, Howard knows what a Western should look like. But the thrills suggested by the trailers, in which the picture is presented almost like a frightening supernatural horror story, are nowhere to be seen. Read full review
30
SalonCharles Taylor
The movie is an unpleasant slog, the gruesomeness working in concert with humorlessness to lend the whole picture a queasy deadliness. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
Can't be dismissed. Yet something keeps this movie from being completely satisfying: a disconnect between the plot and the point. Read full review
42
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
The movie also has a supernatural element: the leader of the renegades (Eric Schweig) turns out to be a sorcerer with occult powers. It's very clumsy, and speaks to the pandering streak in Howard that has always prevented him from being a truly first-rate film artist. Read full review
30
SlateDavid Edelstein
It's a schlock melodrama dolled up in arty frontier vestments. Read full review
50
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
The bones of a great Western remain barely visible under the layer of mush he and screenwriter Ken Kaufman smooth over them, reminders of the viciously memorable film that might have been. Read full review
75
USA TodayMike Clark
This movie will remind a lot of people of John Ford's masterpiece, "The Searchers," without the rowdy humor and, yes, without the greatness. But it's an admirably solid effort that's as mean as it has to be, which is plenty. Read full review
90
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
Has Blanchett and Jones to its credit. To watch them is to take in two of the screen's greatest natural wonders. Read full review
60
Washington PostDesson Thomson
Ron Howard somehow makes a great movie and an awful movie, all at the same time. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
Ron Howard has delivered a movie that’s a big departure from his previous film, "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas." We may not remember him for "The Alamo," but we're glad he kept the Stetson. Read full review
50
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
The Missing is so dour it makes you wonder why they didn't all just pack up and go back East. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy Burr
The movie runs into its deepest trouble with its depiction of Lilly's captors. After years of Hollywood wooden Indians and a more recent run of tribal angels (as in "Dances With Wolves"), movies like "The Last of the Mohicans" have acknowledged the historical truth that Native Americans could be as bloody-minded as their white conquerors. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
A clunky Western that tries so hard to be Politically Correct that although young women are kidnapped by Indians to be sold into prostitution in Mexico, they are never molested by their captors. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
While it roots the heroine's compassion in her Christian beliefs, it suggests Indian occultism is equally powerful. And the last third is a lackluster barrage of stalking, shooting, and fighting. Too bad the movie doesn't ride into its own sunset about an hour earlier. Read full review
40
Dallas ObserverRobert Wilonsky
The only thing The Missing isn't missing is a handful of climaxes, all of them of the anti- variety that leave you believing, then praying the movie's over a good 30 minutes before its actual and inevitable finale. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
It might better be titled The Awkward. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
Watching her (Blanchett) and Jones work together is the chief pleasure of this polished but self-conscious drama--Howard delivers some terse and coherent suspense sequences, but Ford looms over the story like a rifleman hidden in the red rock. Read full review
40
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
If you're able to take The Missing seriously, as I was not, you'll be impressed by its sweep and ambition. The most lasting impression it made on me was one of absurd overreaching.
70
The New YorkerDavid Denby
Improbable and, at times, sadistic, but, considered as a piece of direction, this Western, set in New Mexico in 1885, is as confident as anything that Ron Howard has done. [8 December 2003, p. 139]
25
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Even Cate Blanchett can't save this misbegotten horse opera. Read full review
80
EmpireKim Newman
Probably the best Western since "Unforgiven." Read full review
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