Missing (1982)

Missing, nominated for Best Picture of 1982, is a political thriller, and it's a shame that we don't have more movies like it. The story is sent in an unnamed Latin American country--it's actually Chile, by the way--and involves the search for an American man who has gone missing. His wife and his father join forces to try to locate him despite been stymied at every turn by the officials of the country and by the American diplomats who are allegedly there to assist Americans. It's primarily an indictment of the corruption and ineptitude that seemed to characterize our involvement in Latin America, particularly in the early 1970s when the story takes place.

The film begins with the return of Charlie Horman (John Shea) and his friend Terry Simon (Melanie Mayron), two Americans who have been visiting the coast. They come back to a city that has a curfew that begins even before sundown. They are asked to remain in a hotel for their own safety that first night rather than try to make it to Charlie's home. When they are finally able to return to his house, they find his wife Beth (Sissy Spacek) anxious to leave the country and return to the U.S. She is even more frightened when, after visiting a pregnant friend, she misses her bus home and is forced to spend a terrifying night hiding out from the roving military men who shoot anyone they see. When Beth returns home from her night on the streets, she discovers that her house has been ransacked and her husband has been taken into custody.

The political unrest is graphically depicted in the film. People are taken into custody on the streets in full view of others. People are searched, and bodies and blood litter the sidewalks. There are book burnings and always, always the sound of gunfire in the background. No one, not even Americans, it seems, is truly safe.

After news of Charlie's abduction reaches the United States, we see his father, Ed Horman (Jack Lemmon), meeting with government officials in Washington but getting no assistance. They just keep saying they'll try to help, but no one seems to offer anything tangible. He decides to fly to Chile himself to see if he can speed the investigation along. Initially suspicious of his son's activities--Charlie worked as a writer for a left-wing newspaper and the new government is decidedly right wing--Ed slowly begins to understand just how Beth has become so frustrated and bitter from her dealings with the American consulate and the local government and police representatives.

We see several scenes in flashback that attempt to fill in some of the gaps of what happened during the week of Charlie's disappearance. We get, for example, a sequence in a hotel where Charlie and Terry, on the day of the coup d'etat, learn from a former Navy officer what the American plans are for the country. We also find out what happened to two other American prisoners who were taken into custody. One of those men, Frank (played by Joe Regalbuto, perhaps best known for his work on TV's Murphy Brown), is later found dead in a room full of unidentified corpses. That scene, in particular, is gruesome, displaying as it does the sheer scale of the new government's efforts to suppress its opposition. Equally impressive is the scene where Beth and Ed are taken to a stadium where prisoners are being held. It appears that a full crowd has assembled for a soccer match, not that all of these people are being held captive. The film does a remarkable job of trying to show the scale of what was happening at the time.

As I said earlier, no one in the film ever says the name of the country, but Missing is based upon a true story of an American who disappeared in Chile in 1973 after the assassination of Salvador Allende, a Marxist who had been democratically elected as the president of the country. The coup that followed his assassination saw many people--Chileans and people from other countries--"disappear." The U.S., though the CIA and other government agencies, was later found to be heavily involved in the assassination and coup, and the film's director, Greek-born Costa-Gavras, always one to tackle controversial subject matter in his films, makes sure that photos of Richard Nixon appear throughout the movie. Those pictures serve as a constant visual reminder of the complicitiy of the United States in the activities that are depicted. The film also holds to the timeline of historical events as well by having Charlie's disappearance occur just one day after the actual coup took place.

Missing is an intense film, particularly the closer we get to finding out what happened to Charlie Horman. Costa-Gavras, who also co-wrote the screenplay, spares the viewers little of what happened in Chile. Ed and Beth visit several hospitals, for example, and we see the hundreds of people who have been wounded. When they visit the Italian embassy, we are allowed a glimpse of the hundreds of people who became refugees within their own country, seeking protection in whatever location they could find it. After all that he has seen and after hearing the constant gunfire almost every day he has been in Chile, Ed asks, "What kind of world is this?" It's a question that the film demands we answer.

Lemmon and Spacek, both excellent actors, are in top form here. Spacek's Beth knows how the system operates, and her world-weariness over the slowness of the bureaucracy seems well earned. Lemmon was such a stellar actor. He's perhaps best remembered for comedic roles, but Missing demonstrates just how good he was at dramatic parts as well. He allows you to see the transformation of Ed Horman from a man who suspects that his son has gotten into trouble because of radical politics to a man who realizes just how much his own country has been complicit in the disappearance of his son. It was also refreshing to see Melanie Mayron in the supporting role of Terry. I always loved Mayron on the TV series thirtysomething, but she was also great in numerous movies of the 1980s.

I have read that the filmmakers had to make Missing in Mexico without letting the studio know much about the plot or what they were filming. I can imagine they would have even more difficulty today, given the conservative nature of most of the studios. You would probably not find a major studio willing to put up the money for a film that is so overtly critical of our government's involvement in the affairs of other countries, and you probably wouldn't find stars the caliber of Lemmon and Spacek to be the leads. Thankfully, Missing is one of those brave efforts on the part of everyone involved that manages to document for us a specific moment in the past, one with which we should be familiar.