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Title: Blanchett's better than the movie itself.
Review: Cate Blanchett's portrayal of a prairie healer in "The Missing" is, sadly, the only really good thing that comes out of this Ron Howard-directed Western. The rest of it ventures somewhere between "implausible" to "downright unbelievable."Visually, the film is interesting. But the story is hokey and contrived.The film makes the same mistake with Tommy Lee Jones as a lot of his recent films do. They cast him, expect him to play a "type" and then don't know what to do with him. Jones is pretty good, but only Blanchett is able to elevate herself above the material. Aaron Eckhart, Eric Schweig and promising young actress Evan Rachel Wood are similarly wasted.This is not an above-par Western. It's a hokey, ridiculously plotted B-movie Western whenever Blanchett isn't front-and-center.The ending of the film is formulaic and abrupt.Sadly, I wish I'd missed THE MISSING.
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