When American journalist Charles Horman arrives in Chile to meet his wife Beth and bring her back to New York, however, an overthrow takes places and Charles is arrested by the military force. The story follows the quest of his father and his wife to find him.
Spacek and Lemmon are fine as the missing man's wife and father, but what makes the film so overwhelming in places is its unending night-time imagery of a society coming apart at the seams.
Though Costa-Gavras clearly has a political axe to grind, he manages to do so without haranguing the viewer, keeping the film's focus on his characters and masterfully building tension as the story moves toward its stinging resolution.
Among other things Missing does is to convince you that, next time, you're not going to waste your vote. The passive citizen is the citizen-victim.
EmanuelLevy.Com
June 12, 2007
In Costa-Gavras's fact-inspired political melodrama, Jack Lemmon gives one of his strongest performances as a naive, conservative American who gets rude political awakening when his leftist son is executed with the tacit knowledge of the US government
A story that could have made for a brisk jeremiad on 60 Minutes is stretched to 122 minutes of heroes fuming and villains purring their oleaginous apologies. Spacek and Lemmon, an appealing sweet-and-sour combo, sink in the swamp of good intentions.
