The Missing Person

by Max Segal | 12:45 pm 11/07/2010

Directed By Noah Buschel (4.5/5)

In The Missing Person, writer and director Noah Buschel takes a nostalgic look at the classic film noir genre, but with a twist. This is a private-eye story playfully set in the present day. Private detective Rosow (Michael Shannon) wakes up in a gin-soaked stupor to a phone call from a smooth-talking client offering a lucrative job. Rosow is tasked to follow a suspicious man escorting a Mexican boy on a train from Chicago to Los Angeles. The train setting is one of the many noir tropes that Buschel employs to contrast the past with the present – who takes a train nowadays anyway? Shannon's classy and old-fashioned portrayal is excellent, and through his eyes we can see today's cinema as it must appear to an older generation of movie watchers. Remember when a phone was really a phone, and how about when you could smoke in a taxi and the cabby would follow somebody without checking with his boss?

But perhaps Rosow's vintage charm is something that Buschel misses from films today that are just so much razzle dazzle. For Rosow, that charm goes far and he is able to win over a cast of delightfully detailed characters whom he makes into allies in his quest. They want to help him because he is a throwback, and The Missing Person succeeds in touching that sweet nostalgia button that we all seem to have.

Reviewed By Max Segal

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