Absolutely shameless in its propensity for violence and nonstop action -- and, most of the time, a heck of a lot of fun to watch.
Even when he tries to get dirty, Ron Howard somehow ends up almost squeaky clean. Grit — true grit — is what's missing from “The Missing,” a pretty good Western that the Oscar winner undertook after his long-cherished dream of directing “The Alamo” fell apart. Set in 1885 New Mexico, “The Missing” stars Tommy Lee Jones and Cate Blanchett as a long-estranged father and daughter. Still resentful that her father, Samuel Jones (yes . . . Jones), went to live with the Apaches when she was a child, Maggie (Blanchett) isn't the least bit happy when he rides up decades later for some quality time. However, she's forced to accept his help when her older daughter, Lily (Evan Rachel Wood), is abducted by a gang of renegade scum, en route to Mexico with a dozen or so girls to sell as prostitutes south of the border. They're led by Chidin (Eric Schweig), a terrifying and vicious brujo who wields bad magic as expertly as he does a rifle. Think a shaman gone very wrong. Comparisons to John Ford's classic “The Searchers,” in which John Wayne tracked his kidnapped niece, are probably inevitable. But “The Missing” is more like “Terms of Endearment” with saddles, as Maggie and Jones pause between flash floods and flaming arrows to work out abandonment issues by the campfire. Howard's attempt to blend sensitivity sessions with a hardscrabble Western never really succeeds, despite solid work by the stars and cinematographer Salvatore Totino's exquisitely forbidding and immense landscapes. Further, we don't feel for Lily herself as much as we do for her perilous situation. What little we've seen of her pre-abduction is as a fussy, self-centered teenager who hates living on a farm so much that she wears fancy clothes to feed the cows. Wood proved her acting chops in “Thirteen,” but here, she's not given enough to work with. Far more likable, if barely more multidimensional, is Lily's younger sister, Dot (Jenna Boyd), who insists on accompanying mom and granddad. Boyd imbues Dot with a beguiling toughness, but you have to wonder what she makes of Maggie and Jones' open-range therapy sessions. However, Schweig, who exudes the rampant, inhuman evil of Wes Studi in “The Last of the Mohicans,” gives the movie some much-needed kick. In one of its most gripping sequences, he rids himself of an irritating and sycophantic photographer who's been forcibly brought along to take pictures of the girls. And when Chidin stuffs handfuls of dirt down a rebellious Lily's throat and snarls, “This is how the rest of your life will taste,” you believe him.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: By BOB LONGINO