Curator Watchlist
Missing
A gripping political thriller with real moral force, anchored by strong performances from Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek. S.… Read more
Curator Watchlist
A gripping political thriller with real moral force, anchored by strong performances from Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek. S.… Read more
Where to watch: Buy
Fri · 2h 3m
Director: Costa-Gavras
Starring: Jack Lemmon, Sissy Spacek, Melanie Mayron
Based on the real-life experiences of Ed Horman. A conservative American businessman travels to Chile to investigate the sudden disappearance of his son after a military takeover. Accompanied by his son's wife he uncovers a trail of cover-ups that implicate the US State department which supports the dictatorship.
Costa-Gavras
Jack Lemmon, Sissy Spacek, Melanie Mayron
A gripping political thriller with real moral force, anchored by strong performances from Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek. It’s especially effective as an indictment of state violence, U.S. complicity, and the human cost of bureaucratic denial.
Missing is one of those films where the urgency of the subject becomes the engine of the drama. Costa-Gavras turns a disappearance into a slow-burn nightmare, using the search for one man to expose a much larger machinery of repression, denial, and international complicity. The film’s power comes from how ordinary and unprepared its central figures are for the scale of what they uncover.
Jack Lemmon gives the story its emotional spine, playing a man whose politics and assumptions are stripped away scene by scene. Sissy Spacek brings clarity, anger, and grief without ever overplaying the role. Their dynamic gives the film a human center that keeps it from becoming a purely procedural account of atrocities.
It can feel talky and deliberately explanatory, but that directness is part of its purpose. This is a film built to make the audience understand how power hides itself, and why that matters. For viewers open to politically charged cinema with a strong factual basis, it remains sharp, unsettling, and very much alive.
cait (3★) · 638 likes
obsessed with the fact that the us state department released a three page statement denouncing this film. that’s worth more than any silly little award
fran hoepfner (4.5★) · 316 likes
The most conventional aspect of Missing is that Ed and Beth are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, and a number of their scenes together are him trying to reckon with her “kooky leftist views” that spit in the face of his conservative Christian Science. That Missing is helmed by one star from Old Hollywood (Lemmon) and one star from New Hollywood (Spacek) lends it an interesting air of legitimacy, so to speak. It’s not only that the horrible
Sean Fennessey (4★) · 203 likes
I wonder if Alex Garland watched this recently.
Tim Fehrenbach (4.5★) · 164 likes
“they are killing people here, and nobody knows who’s next.” Really intense on multiple levels. At first we’re thrown into the dread of not knowing what’s happening or who to trust, the world has already collapsed into chaos. The film makes you feel the shock of sudden powerlessness, as scattered attacks erupt from a repressive, murderous regime. But the terror goes deeper than soldiers in the streets – it’s the realization that the rule of law has been replaced by… more
shookone (2.5★) · 139 likes
50 years since Allende's death & the military coup in Chile memorial programme the filmic equivalent of talking an important discourse to death. the dialogues are suffocating everything that cinema is made of. I kept full attention - which is a tough thing to do when the screenplay doesn't allow anything else than their words taking over - but could detect only glimpses of cinematic moments here. remembering Z this seems to be a general trait of Costa-Gavras style. a central… more
Costa-Gavras’s breakthrough political thriller shares the same outrage, momentum, and procedural investigation of state violence.
A landmark of political cinema that dramatizes repression and resistance with documentary-like intensity.
Another Costa-Gavras film about political kidnapping, foreign intervention, and the machinery of power.
For viewers who like conspiracy narratives that turn institutional mistrust into a chilling atmosphere.
A sleek paranoia thriller about hidden systems and the danger of knowing too much.
Shares the same anxious mood of surveillance, uncertainty, and moral isolation.
A tense 1970s thriller where personal danger collides with shadowy political and intelligence networks.
Not thematically identical, but it offers a similarly direct, politically charged rescue-and-retrieval framework.
A journalist’s-eye view of political upheaval, danger, and the cost of witnessing history.
A hard-edged political drama about U.S. involvement in Latin American conflict and the ethics of intervention.
A strong fit for its mix of journalism, revolution, and the pressure of reporting amid state violence.
A harrowing true-story drama about survival, witness, and the human toll of political catastrophe.
state violence, political repression, disappearance and loss, U.S. foreign policy, truth-seeking, family grief, bureaucratic cover-up, authoritarianism
political thriller, based on true events, Cold War, authoritarian regime, investigative drama, state conspiracy, family tragedy, 1970s politics, journalistic urgency, historical drama