E-Mail This Article to a Friend THE MISSING

Based on Thomas Eidson’s novel, Ron Howard’s foray into the Western genre is a bumpy, ersatz reprise of John Ford’s The Searchers. It begins on the stark plains of New Mexico, where Maggie Gilkeson (Cate Blanchett) is a single mother dulled by the chores of frontier life until a band of renegade Apaches hack up her ranch hand/lover (Aaron Eckhart) and kidnap her eldest daughter (Evan Rachel Wood, who was so edgy in Thirteen) for the virgin trade south of the border. The sheriff and the cavalry prove incompetent, so Maggie reluctantly calls on her estranged father (Tommy Lee Jones), who has run with the Apache and can read the signs of the land. Locating the marauders is only part of the problem, however; their witch doctor (Eric Schweig) is so bloodthirsty and invincible, you’d think Freddy or Jason had fallen through the clouds. Howard and writer Ken Kaufman try to tart up the clichés with bravado but succeed only in turning a talented cast into theme-park performers. (130 minutes) At the Boston Common, the Fenway, the Fresh Pond, and the Chestnut Hill and in the suburbs.