Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Orla Zuniga It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Jenna Walter The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

SnoopyStyle Alcoholic private investigator John Rosow (Michael Shannon) is hired by Miss Charley (Amy Ryan) to follow a man on a train from Chicago to Los Angeles. The man is traveling with a kid who turns out to be one of the missing presumed dead during 9/11. Rosow has suppose to him bring back to his wife. There are a couple of supposed FBI agents and a woman who sleeps with him but hiding an agenda.This is a meandering hard-boiled private eye story. Michael Shannon is good as this character. It's not terribly intense. There's only so much that Shannon can do with the material especially if he has to do it as a drunk for the whole movie. The style reminds me of some of the 70s attempt to revive the 50s noir. I like that style but the story needs a lot more tension.

tieman64 Michael Shannon has a face built for noir, but writer/director Noah Buschel doesn't exploit it well enough in "The Missing Person". The film's a neo-noir, but slack pacing, amateurish dialogue, unnecessary nods to 9/11 and a low budget hamper things.Still, the overall arc of Bushchel's screenplay is very interesting. It stars Shannon as John Rosow, a hard-drinking, hard-boiled (is there any other?) private investigator who's tasked with trailing a man named John Fullmer. Here's the interesting part: Rosow learns that Fullmer has been both a "missing person" and presumed dead for many years. Though Rosow is tasked with "bringing in" Fullmer so that he may be reunited with his family, he opts against it. Better to let Fullmer live peacefully in his newly fabricated life. This reprieve echoes Rosow's own private demons, which he too must "let go of" if he hopes to "build a new life". The film suggests that Roscow's evocative of ancient noir gum-shoes precisely because he is always caught "out of time", locked into dwelling about a past that he can't let go of and so keeps on scarring.The film contains several visual allusions to and recreations of Edward Hopper's "New York Movie", an oil-on-canvas painting from 1939. Why Hopper? Hopper's proved a huge influence on noir. His "Nighthawks" was cooked up after reading Ernest Hemingway's noirish "The Killers" (the filmed version of Hemingway's tale would later be influenced by Hopper's paintings), but even two decades before this, long before noir was even born, Hopper was churning out moody paintings evocative of early noirs. His 1921 etching "Night Shadows", for example, looks like an ahead-of-its-time high-angle shot from a Fritz Lang movie and his "House by the Railside" (and numerous early paintings of anonymous apartment blocks and motels) would prove a huge influence on Hitchcock's "Psycho". Walter Hill ("The Driver", "Hard Times") and Wim Wenders ("Hammet", "Paris Texas", "The American Friend", "The End of Violence") would openly consult Hopper's work when filming the aforementioned films.So Bushchel's nod to Hopper is no surprise. What's surprising is his choice of "New York Movie". This particular painting consists of a movie usherette (blonde, bosomy; a typical noir gal) leaning against a cinema wall. The painting is then split roughly in half such that its left side is bathed in a darkness which offers only glimpses of audience members and a murky cinema screen, upon which escapist, idyllic rolling hills are projected. Meanwhile, the painting's right half serves as the usherette's own mind-space, well-lit, with passionate red curtains, lamps and a mysterious staircase suggestive of her "thoughts up there". Despite - as is traditional of Hopper - strong feelings of anonymity, loneliness, tranquillity and isolation, you sense a whirlpool of thoughts emanating from the usherette. Significantly, the painting is bisected by a phallic pillar, filled with swirling patterns evocative of nightmarish, half-coalesced thoughts. The pillar almost seems to signify the dividing point where fantasy is either (or bleeds into) projected and externalised (the cinema screen/object) or internalised/contemplated (usherette/subject). Rosow seems caught in a similar dilemma, brooding like the usherette instead of letting go like Hopper's eye-ball zapped audience.The film's narrative is a loose retelling of "The Flitcraft Parable", a moment of digression in Dashiell Hammett's noir novel "The Maltest Falcon". One of literature's great digressions, the parable involves detective Sam Spade telling a girl the story of a middle class real estate agent called Flitcraft who, after nearly dying, has an existential epiphany. Flitcraft then decides to abandon his wife, kids, large income and perfect American family. "He went just like that," Spade says, "like a fist when you open your hand." The irony is that Spade then stumbles upon Flitcraft several years later living a "new life" almost identical to his "old one". Having wiped the slate clean, Flintcraft thus inadvertently rebuilt that which he was running away from. Men, Spade implies, adjust themselves to the world. Spade, however, adjusts the world to himself. This, of course, is a very Satrean, existential commitment. Bushchel's retelling of the parable doesn't go this far.7.5/10 – Worth one viewing. See "Black Dahlia", "The Big Sleep" and "A Prairie Home Companion".

frankopy-2 What director Noah Buschel has concocted with "The Missing Person" is to take a genre and fine tune it with touches that, while original, ultimately pay homage to, and even nourish, noir.What he has done,too, is set up any number of movies he might want to make with the masterly Michael Shannon as private eye John Rosow; and re-recruit, too, the saucily effective Amy Ryan.This moody artwork about finding a mysteriously but voluntary missing person has all sorts of twists and turns, none predictable, as it weaves its way through the dark.That Shannon plays roles Bogart feasted on is all too true. but it is the rugged countenance of Mitchum that he more facilely brings to mind. Shannon,so powerful in the film "Revolutionary Road" and then HBO's raunchy and real "Boardwalk Empire" series, and yet again in the rock film "The Runaways," is special, indeed. His screen effect is compelling,mesmerizing.All we need now is a script and the word "Action!"

Dan Franzen (dfranzen70) The Missing Person is, on the surface, about an alcoholic ex-cop who's assigned to find the titular character and bring him home to his wife. But it's much more than that; it's a look at how the survivors of the September 11 attacks continued with their lives, post-tragedy, and it's about man's powers of self redemption. It's a character study in the guise of a film noir mystery.John Rosow, played by Michael Shannon, is contacted by a mysterious client to follow a man from Chicago to LA, find out what he's up to, and then bring him home to New York. But Rosow's investigation unearths more than a simple retrieval mission, and ultimately it reveals a heck of a lot about him and his past, particularly in how he has dealt with losing his wife during the 9/11 attacks.Because, you see - and you will, early on, no spoiler here - the missing person is one of the many who simply were never heard from again after the attacks on the Twin Towers. Many of those people were (and are) presumed dead, but some may have behaved like Harold Fullmer (Frank Wood) and moved elsewhere to get on with their lives anew. Harold's up to something, but luckily for us it's not something nefarious (that would have been too obvious, certainly), and soon Rosow is faced with a moral quandary - should he let Harold stay where he is, or is he obligated to bring him back east? Shannon is superb, a craggy, world-weary Johnny Law who's been leaning on the drink for far too long. We've seen these oversoaked cops before, the ones who are either cold-shocked by tragedy or just numbed to everyday horrors. But below the seen-it-all surface, Rosow has plenty of issues, plenty of bad memories, and plenty of guilt.Thus there are dovetailing plots - the apprehension of Fullmer and the redemption of Rosow. Writer Noah Buschel, who also directed, has crafted a rich, crusty mystery thriller into a psychological study of the long-term effects of a truly horrific day in American history, particularly on individuals; in this case, one man flees his memories, while the other embraces them nightly.I wanted to mention this movie in particular, because it's certainly not one that most people have heard of (it's now on DVD). It's a quiet, subtle look at an event that was itself nothing but. It's well written and insightful into the psyche of a survivor, and it includes a commanding performance by Shannon (nominated for an Oscar for Revolutionary Road, overshadowing both Kate Winslet and the overacting of Leonardo Dicaprio) along with strong support from Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone).