The running time is 2 hrs. 34 mins..
Without a doubt, this was 2003's most underrated film. Beautifully acted to Oscar-caliber precision by both Cate Blanchett and Tommy Lee Jones, this story of a mother (Blanchett) joining forces with her estranged gone-native father (Jones) to find the band of renegades responsible for kidnapping her eldest daughter (a stunning Evan Rachel Wood, Thirteen) is a stunner on almost every level. But what makes this film a masterpiece is the melancholic grace in which Howard refuses to shy away from the tale's inherent sadness. None of his other films has the temerity to dive into the depressing angst brewing between father and daughter here, the tragic outcome of their search barely tempered by the relative successes incurred at the climax.
All that said, I'm not too sure what to make of this newly released "extended cut" of The Missing just put out on DVD by Sony Pictures. The film itself is still a stunner, yes, but this new disc is, in virtually no way, a vast improvement over the original release. As director Howard says himself in his commentary track, he has final cut on all his films, so the release that hit theaters was the one he felt was best, and now after watching this one with 17 additional minutes woven back in I can't help but agree with him.
One of my few complaints the first time around was that at 137 minutes the picture was just a wee bit too long. Now at a full 154 minutes that holds almost double. It takes over a half an hour for the girl to go missing, almost another 30 minutes before anything suspenseful occurs again. Sure the character moments between Blanchett and Jones are nice (a scene where they discuss a dead brother is truly a stunner), but they were already richly bountiful the first time around so this addition seems like nothing more than needless padding just to sell a few more copies of the DVD.
Let's be truthful here. This is no director's cut along the lines of Ridley Scott's also newly released Kingdom of Heaven or a thorough examination of the filmmaking process like Peter Jackson's extended versions of The Lord of the Rings pictures. All this release does is reincorporate the many deleted scenes found on the original release of the film on DVD, nothing more, and while the film is still a borderline masterpiece it's a masterpiece I find myself watching now with additional reservations.
The Missing – Extended Cut comes without the 11 featurettes found on the original disc but it does include the three amusing short films Howard made as a teenager, six mini-interviews with the director on various Western topics and two theatrical trailers for the anemic Freedomland and the fantastic Tommy Lee Jones's directed The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. It also includes a commentary track from Howard who, while passing along a few great insights into the film's making here and there (including the reason they were able to acquire Val Kilmer for his affecting cameo), tends to watch his film far too intently leading to long silences that make listening to the track almost pointless.
In all fairness, for someone like me who loves The Missing as a modern day Western classic all this bellyaching amounts to nothing more than a hill of overcooked beans. This extended cut is a must for someone like me, a definite eye-opening showstopper that's an enlightening look into the filmmaking process. Putting both films side by side, you can really see the workings of a director at the top of his game, the tough choices he makes in order to produce the best possible work he only can hope audiences will love. I did love it, and even if this new version isn't an improvement, I'm sure as heck happy I at least got the chance to watch it all the same.