Your mother has traveled to South America with her boyfriend. They didn’t return. Could you find her? This is the query asked by Missing, which apparently is not a remake of the Jack Lemmon–Sissy Spacek drama from 1982 but a “stand alone sequel” to the internet driven mystery Searching. Quite frankly, it reminded me of both films initially but ultimately reminded me of neither.
Mom (Nia Long) got a new boyfriend not long ago. They went to Cartagena, Columbia for fun. Isn’t that where stuff went down in Romancing the Stone? You would think that American actresses would avoid the place, right? First, what I liked about this film is that I fully expected for teenage June (Storm Reid) to be abducted while mom was away. Not the case; it’s mom that goes Missing. Secondly, I liked that June was more attached to her late father who died years ago of a brain tumor. She and Grace (her mom) have a relationship that has to warm significantly just to get to “tepid.” I know it sounds cliché (heck it is cliché) for a mother and daughter to connect only through tragedy, but this part of the film works – June didn’t really care about what her mother did in Columbia, just how her mother will react upon returning to find several messes June made.
Well, what if mom doesn’t come back? June spends an ugly day at LAX – which doesn’t exactly qualify it, now does it? Who wants to spend any day at LAX? – before getting the idea that mom might be in trouble. This is where the picture gets good because June has to change. The first twenty minutes or so described an aloof, self-indulgent, two-faced ingrate. A nice one, but still a two-faced ingrate. Now, June’s gotta be NOT that.
When Grace goes Missing, June has to play detective. And the picture becomes one of June putting aside her teen bullshit and asking herself: “What do I know and how can I use that to find mom?” Does she know the hotel where they stayed in Cartagena? Does she know what they did on their vacation? Are there any public sites with cameras? Were there any receipts? If she could get an ally on the ground in Columbia, what would she have him (Joaquim de Almeida) do? Does she know how mom and Kevin (Ken Leung) met? Would an email trail help? In a case like this, detection is only limited by your imagination; in the modern world, most everybody leaves a tangible trail of some kind. Discovery entirely
comes down to: are you asking the right questions and using the right tools?
If you’re like me, you love a film like this because it’s not only a puzzle, it’s a set of steps you can guess or suggest, and an empowerment for anybody who feels like they have no influence. Don’t think you can do anything from where you sit? Do you have a computer that has internet access? You can see the sunset in Jamaica. You can order room service in Karachi. In December, you can see if the Gävle Goat is still standing. We take these things for granted because our lives are currently riddled with the problems of the internet, but the truth is if you own a cell phone, you own a tool more powerful than any that existed in history before the 21st Century. If you can’t use it properly, that’s not the tool’s fault.
My love of Missing is dampened by the conclusion which made me question everything that went before it. For me, it was like spending all day with your first Rubik’s Cube only to realize the puzzle was a Sudoku. Oh. Did that make sense? I’m not sure. Am I put off by this? Honestly, yes. Enough to dislike the picture? No. Oh, and FWIW, Searching and Missing (1982) are both excellent films.
There once was a girl named June
Whose mother was over the moon
‘Bout a guy named Ken
Who took her and then
Didn’t return anytime soon
Rated PG-13, 111 Minutes
Director: Nicholas D. Johnson, Will Merrick
Writer: Nicholas D. Johnson, Will Merrick
Genre: O what a tangled World Wide Web we weave …
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Thriller fans
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Logic fans
