What’s “Missing” here is excitement

The Missing

Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Cate Blanchett and Aaron Eckhart…

The Missing

Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Cate Blanchett and Aaron Eckhart

Directed by Ron Howard

It is hard to follow up a “Best Picture.”

Director Ron Howard takes a hard turn from “A Beautiful Mind” with “The Missing,” a faux rendition – though not technically a remake – of the classic, John Ford-directed, John Wayne western “The Searchers.”

Howard goes for old-fashioned, but ends up with a film that audiences are more likely to find rigid, bland and tired, not to mention overlong.

In the film, which is set in the wilderness of New Mexico in the late 1800s, Tommy Lee Jones plays Samuel Jones, Apache convert and estranged father of Maggie Gilkeson (Cate Blanchett), “healer” and single mother of two young girls – though handyman Brake (Aaron Eckhart) keeps her company in some capacity. After most of a lifetime, Samuel shows up, sick in the soul, on Maggie’s door, is refused forgiveness, then is promptly cast off.

A day later, though, Maggie finds herself in desperate need of her father’s help. Renegade Apache soldiers – of the American army – kill Brake and kidnap Maggie’s teen-aged daughter. The sheriff and the army are no help – everyone knows it takes an Apache to track an Apache. Samuel is still nearby, held in jail for public drunkenness, and gets the chance to redeem himself by rescuing his granddaughter.

The story plays out – gradually – exactly how you think it will.

Jones and Blanchett aren’t working too hard – Blanchett is above this rather typical mother-driven-to-violence role, and Jones was, just recently, a more convincing tracker in “The Hunted,” as over-the-top as that film was.

Howard -the blandness of whose direction does not surprise me, since, contrary to the notions of the Academy, he hasn’t made an exciting film since “Apollo 13” – does at least surprise with his attempts to make the film dark. “The Missing” has somewhat of a gothic slant. The kidnappers are led by a murderous witch with a thing for snakes and some mean spells. Why didn’t he try to make “A Beautiful Mind” a harder film? After all, it was about living with untreated schizophrenia.

One thing the filmmakers do get right is the casting of Eric Schweig in the role of Chidin, the witch. The actor has the most evil-looking face I’ve seen on screen in quite a while. But again, it’s a waste – such a face belongs on a better villain than “The Missing” has to offer.

It won’t be long before this one is “missing” from theaters.

“The Missing” opens in theaters Wednesday.