Jack Lemmon was perhaps the quintessential
Everyman of American cinema, a reliably earnest, down-to-earth performer who
was equally good at playing the put-upon hero in Billy Wilder comedies and embodying
an average, relatable guy in dramas like The China Syndrome or Glengarry Glen Ross. So it's especially
heartbreaking to watch Lemmon's performance in Costa-Gavras' Missing, which casts him as a
conservative American businessman who searches, with mounting disillusionment,
for a son that disappeared in the midst of a bloody Latin American putsch.
While there's an element of left-wing fantasy in Lemmon's conversion from
unquestioning patriot to newly awakened skeptic of U.S. covert activities,
Lemmon's emotional directness, driven by a need simply to find answers, makes
that transition entirely plausible. Within this decent citizen lies the
conscience of a nation.
Based on Thomas Hauser's book The Execution Of
Charles Horman, Missing
takes place in an unnamed Latin American country, but it doesn't much sleuthing
to figure out that it's 1973 Chile during General Pinochet's military coup over
Salvador Allende's democratically elected socialist government. Charles Horman
was an American journalist and filmmaker living in Santiago with his wife
Joyce, played in Missing by Sissy Spacek, when he disappeared and was never heard from
again. Though his father Ed (Lemmon), a New York businessman, has always found
his son flaky and naïve, and doesn't approve of his lifestyle, he joins Joyce
in a wild-goose chase through bureaucratic dead ends. They eventually come to
suspect that the American consulate is lying to them about Charles'
disappearance and about their country's investment in the coup's success.
Ever the political provocateur, Costa-Gavras (Z, State Of Siege) actually got an official
response to Missing from the U.S. government, which is included on the DVD. That
response uncannily echoes the pathetic obfuscations of American officials
within the film itself, which should be reason enough to believe that the
Hormans, Hauser, and Costa-Gavras were hitting the right buttons. Through an
effective procedural style, Missing tours a city where bullet-riddled bodies turn up
on the streets, in waterways, and in warehouses, where others of the
"disappeared" are laid out with no claimants. True to form, Costa-Gavras hits
these revelations with a hammer, but in the face of such horrors, subtlety isn't
a proper response.
Key features: A supplemental disc
includes a moving 2008 interview with Joyce Horman, two contrasting interviews
(one from '82, the other from '96) with Costa-Gavras, and a conversation with
cast, director, and Horman's family at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, where Missing won the Palme D'Or and
Best Actor.