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| Missing |
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  (7/10)
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Runtime: 122 |
| Public Rating: 8.09 (23 votes) |
Director: Constantin Costa-Gavras |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Drama |
Year: 1982 |
| Writer(s): Thomas Hauser & Constantin Costa-Gavras |
| Distributor: Universal Studios |
| Reviewed by: Ertug Tufekcioglu |
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MISSING: EDWARD HORMAN, American.
Writer, Journalist, Dreamer.
Location: South America
Military Dictatorship.
His father, Name (Jack Lemmon), not ready to believe the bad news, reluctantly comes to Chile to search for his missing son—Charles. Beth Horman (Sissy Spacek) is already looking for Charles Horman (John Shea) by herself since she disbelieves American government’s help from the beginning. Later, Ed Horman will have to join her even though he first trusts his government as a conservative American. Costa-Gavras tells this true drama scrupulously with his accomplished style, famous for his numerous challenging and politically charged thrillers.
Since this true story is about an American citizen who gets unfairly arrested by non-Americans, it already had a good chance to be a winner in American theaters. However, Costa-Gavras totally challenges American audience by showing the other side of the American government, yet reaches to a bigger success both artistically and politically. The balance of the storyline is remarkable in terms of receiving more flashbacks, which connects us to the back-story more. At the end, we watch a 2-hour drama, which actually had an impact of a 4-hour movie.
After Jack Lemmon’s appearance in the movie, Sissy Spacek’s performance also takes off and this true story becomes much more poignant. Another remarkable point is the casting for these characters. As we expect from them, both Sissy Spacek and Jack Lemmon do not give any histrionic performance to epitomize their characters even though the genre of this film could easily carry that cheap melodrama. I believe this decision of Costa-Gavras shows that he chose to be sincere with his viewers. This might be another reason to the success of this award-winning script.
While the movie cinematically suffers some coverage and becomes exhausting with excessive long shots; editing and the dialogues in two different languages to combine and separate different mentalities make the story much more gripping.
One of the most important scenes in the movie is where the American Ambassador confronts Ed Horman about America’s political agenda, when Ed accuses America for being deceitful and devious to other countries.
For those who like to be challenged ideally while watching a movie...
Ertug Tufekcioglu
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