Criterion Collection: Missing [DVD] [1982] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

Costa-Gavras shot his controversial 'State of Siege' in Chile not long before the violent US-backed Allende coup. Maybe it's that familiarity with the locale that makes Costa-Gavras' 'Missing' seem so authentic.

More than just a startling vision of day-to-day life in the aftermath of a violent coup, there's much more of a feeling for the place and what ordinary people lost in the coup. There's a real sense of chaos in its imagery - dead bodies littering the streets as people try to go about their daily business or floating by in rivers, soldiers chasing and shooting at a white horse through deserted streets or diners on a rooftop garden leaving their means to watch a helicopter gunship shoot at unseen curfew violators. The sheer casual and irrational nature of violence ("You Americans always assume there has to be a reason") gives the film a palpable sense of terror and dread: this is a place where even an earthquake can't get people out onto the dangerous streets after curfew.

The fact that this time round Costa-Gavras had a Hollywood budget to play with helps immensely, but he also has a script based around people who aren't defined strictly by their politics - indeed, the movie is basically a search for `a political neophyte' by a gruff and unlikeable conservative (Jack Lemmon, on excellent form) and the missing man's wife (Sissy Spacek), a search that takes in embassies crowded with asylum seekers, morgues with hundreds of bodies piled almost haphazardly and the national football stadium that has been turned into a vast prison/torture chamber/place of execution. It's an outraged film but it's also one aware of its own impotence - this is a journey from hope to bitter and exhausted acceptance that there is nothing that an individual can do in the face of politically expedient mass murder.

It's easily Costa-Gavras' real enduring masterpiece, having lost none of its power more than a quarter of a century on, and its sobering to think that there was a time when movies like this weren't just mainstream releases, they were also big box-office. It's just a shame that Universal's DVD is such a shoddy disc - it doesn't even have a menu page! This is a film that really does deserve the Criterion treatment, or a special edition at the very least (there is a special edition in France with audio commentary by Costa-Gavras and interviews with the director and Joyce Horman).

As Amazon has unhelpflly combined the reviews for the standard extras-free UK Univeral edition and the US Criterion disc, the extras that are ONLY on the the NTSC Region 1 DVD two-disc set include:

- Video interviews with Costa-Gavras and Joyce Horman (wife of Charles Horman).
- Producing Missing, an interview documentary featuring producers Edward and Mildred Lewis, studio exec Sean Daniel, and Thomas Hauser, author of Missing, the film's source book.
- Interviews from the 1982 Cannes Film Festival with Costa-Gavras, Jack Lemmon, Ed Horman (father of Charles), and Joyce Horman. Unfortunately, as these were made for a live French TV broadcast these are simultaneously translated into French.
- New video essay with Peter Kornbluh, author of The Pinochet File, examining declassified documents concerning the 1973 military coup in Chile and the case of Charles Horman.
- Video highlights from the 2002 Charles Horman Truth Project event honoring the twentieth anniversary of Missing, with actors Sissy Spacek, John Shea, and Melanie Mayron
- Theatrical trailer
- A booklet featuring a new essay by critic Michael Wood, an interview with Costa-Gavras, the U.S. State Department's official response to Missing, and an open letter from Horman family friend Terry Simon.

But buy it anyway for the film itself. It's worth it.

One of the great films of the 1980s and one of the greatest political thrillers of all time, shot through with a palpable sense of menace and at times almost unbearable tension. Costa-Gavras takes the true story of the disappearance and murder of an American journalist, Charlie Horman, and uses it to illustrate the wider story of the United States backed overthrow of the democratically elected government of Chile in 1973, and the mass murder the coup perpetrators initiated in an effort to secure their position.

At the heart of the film is one of Jack Lemmon's finest performances - which in a career that included The Apartment, The China Syndrome and Some Like it Hot, is saying something. Sissy Spacek and John Shea are dependably fine in support, underscoring the still relevant point that ideological dogmatism and mule-headed ignorance of the world invariably leads to the killing and maiming of ordinary, loving people.

Undoubtedly Missing turns out to be a great piece of cinema, one of the brightest works of political film-maker Costa-Gavras. Based on true events, it successfully captures the chaotic atmosphere of Chile during the first weeks of Pinochet government. Crisp and compelling, the story is based on the vain struggle of an American businessman Ed Horman to recover his son, who vanished without a trace during the helter-skelter following the right-wing political coup.

The general mood of the movie fits the story and its backdrop well with a fine score by Vangelis. Acting two controversial characters, Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek both deliver dazzling performances. Costa-Gavras uses an ingenious technique of flashbacks to give the people more deep background and allows them to draw conclusions from what they may have missed. This is the reason that the movie lacked a bit of clarity to the end and it causes little ambiguity.

Contrary to the movie, that Universal DVD is such a "bare to bones" disc. There are no audio options (English mono only). The transfer is poor, pictures are grainy, and of course it lacks special features. What a shame!!! I think this is a kind of movie that really does deserve special edition treatment...