Ron Howard, fresh from his award-winning efforts on A Beautiful Mind, turns his attentions to a kidnapping thriller, set in the Western genre amongst the awsome landscape of New Mexico, circa 1885.

Red Indians, who had been working for the US army, have broken away to form a rebel group of deserters. Kidnapping white girls, just coming into womanhood, and selling them over the border in Mexico is proving a lucrative business.

Against this backdrop, we view tough and embittered Maggie Gilkeson (Cate Blanchett), a homesteader trying to bring up two daughters on her own. When her estranged father (Tommy Lee Jones) turns up on the doorstep, he's less than welcome, but, after years living with the Apaches, his tracking skills are soon in demand, when Maggie's eldest girl falls foul of the renegades. .

The Missing isn't going to break new ground over the division between good and evil. The lines are well defined, throughout. What is interesting, however, is the that Howard has attempted to bring an understanding to the lives and ways of the Indian tribes. Some are even allowed to speak their own language (with subtitles).

The leads give good performances and, even though you think you know what's going to happen in the end, there are a few surprises. The film is harsh and fairly unremitting. The idea of girls becoming a commodity, to be traded as slaves, seems totally alien in this day and age, although believable for that time and place.

Rather like The Fugitive, you have Jones in a role that suits him best, on the trail of the criminal, ably supported by Blanchett, playing a part equally well suited, a woman with guts, fighting for her kith, in desolate territory.