An adaptation of Tomas Eidson’s novel ‘The Last Ride’. Cate Blanchett’s daughter is kidnapped and she gives chase, aided by her father (Tommy Lee Jones).

2004 saw a one of the periodic mini-booms that are meant to persuade us that the Western isn’t dead, just sleeping it off round the campfire. Galloping close behind (OK I’ll stop now) Costner’s terrific Open Range was The Missing, the latest in little Ronnie Howard’s attempts to prove he’s a real grown-up director.

Again he largely succeeds, and there are some very nasty moments here courtesy of Eric Schweig’s malevolent shaman, who murders Cate Blanchett’s boyfriend and kidnaps her daughter for the slave trade. Tommy Lee Jones turns up looking suitably haggard as Blanchett’s father, and they give chase while rebuilding their relationship.

If  Open Range was Unforgiven, as many critics alleged, then this is The Searchers. In any other month this might have seemed like a great movie, but it lacks the emotional punch of Costner’s movie; I got the suspicion that a modern set of values was being imposed on a previous age, and that the moral dilemmas at the heart of the movie were set in a bit of a false context.

The stars are as good as you’d expect, and Val Kilmer pops up in disguise for a very odd cameo which doesn’t add much to the plot. I suspect I’ll have to watch it again in a non-Western year to judge its true value.

Mild Peril Rating:

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