Missing soul

As a frontierswoman concerned for the safety of her family, she doesn't like Indians much, and when an ageing white man (Tommy Lee Jones) appears dolled up in

long hair and feathers, he gets a long stare and is sent on his way. We soon discover that the mysterious stranger is her father who deserted his family long ago and 'went native'.

But then our doctor heroine finds that her boyfriend's been boiled in a bag by Indians and her elder daughter (the promising Evan Rachel Wood, from Simone and Thirteen) has been kidnapped by renegade Apaches, and the only person willing to help track down the guilty parties is, you guessed it, her dodgy dad.

The film refreshingly doesn't try to soft-pedal the racism of our heroine and her elder daughter; instead, it tries to make it understandable.

It also has a refreshingly cleareyed view of the inhumane way indigenous tribes were ethnically cleansed as the West was won (a subject covered with more

ruthless realism in Walter Hill's under-appreciated Geronimo).

Ken Kaufman's script, based on Thomas Eidson's novel The Last Ride, flirts with political correctness and an anachronistically feminist agenda, but for a Hollywood Western of the past 40 years it feels relatively true to the late 19th century.

Salvatore Totino's excellent cinematography makes the most of America's timeless, wide-open spaces. Rivalling these for ruggedness is Tommy Lee Jones, who skilfully underplays opposite Blanchett's more histrionic approach, and seems authentic because he doesn't seek her sympathy, or ours.

He may be a man searching for redemption, but he's not the kind of man who does much apologisin'.

The movie loses its way around the middle as we're asked to believe that the leader of the bad guys (Eric Schweig, made to look splendidly ugly) is a witch with supernatural powers. I didn't swallow this for a second, and for 15 minutes it's as though good old reliable Ron Howard has handed over the direction to Oliver Stone at his nuttiest.

If Howard had jettisoned this unnecessary complication, he would have brought the movie down to around two hours, which would have helped its commercial prospects considerably.

The Missing is a Western that never quite rises to the status of the classics it strives to emulate (the most famous of these being The Searchers and Shane).

It feels factory-made and lacking in originality; but it is beautifully presented, competently acted and carefully written so that, although the main plotline is predictable, there are enough twists along the way to keep anyone interested. This is worth two hours 17 minutes of your time, especially if you like old-fashioned Westerns.

The Missing
Cert: cert15