The Missing

The Missing (2003) is Ron Howard's western, and it takes the classic shape of the genre and builds it around a woman. New Mexico, 1885. Maggie is a rancher and healer raising two daughters. Her elder daughter Lily is taken by a group intending to sell her across the border. Maggie's only chance of following them is the father who abandoned her years earlier to live among the Apache. The film is openly in conversation with The Searchers: the same setup, except the person riding out is not a man consumed by revenge but a mother who wants her child back. The coldness between Cate Blanchett and Tommy Lee Jones is the strongest thing in it. The father is not forgiven simply for returning, and the film refuses to make that easy. The portrayal of the Apache characters is contested. The antagonist is built as a mystical, nearly supernatural figure, which is one of the western's older problems. It runs 135 minutes and the middle is long. Good for: westerns, survival and pursuit stories, and strong female leads. Less good for: abduction, trafficking of a child and violence, some of it hard. Anyone wanting the classic western rhythm will find this too dark.