The Missing Person Review
By David Kempler
Not the Stuff That Dreams Are Made of
"Keep on riding me, Spade, and they're gonna be picking iron out of your liver."
The quote above was spoken to Sam Spade (Bogart) in "The Maltese Falcon". It's a great example of Film Noir dialog.
Noah Buschel has penned and directed "The Missing Person", an homage to Film Noir. While I'm an enormous fan of the genre, Buschel has gone so far over the top here that it becomes a piece that lies somewhere between goofy and satire, and I'm not sure that either is the goal of the director. Actually, I'm not the least bit sure what Buschel is trying to accomplish even though my best guess remains homage.
John Rosow (Michael Shannon) is a PI hired to tail Harold Fullmer (Frank Wood) on a train going from Chicago to Los Angeles. Rosow isn't sure why he has gotten the assignment or what the assignment exactly entails. I won't tell you anything about what it turns out to be, because to reveal that is to reveal the entire story.
What I will tell you is that Buschel pulls every trick ever seen in any Film Noir ever put on celluloid or video. The print at my screening was atrociously gritty, presumably on purpose. Los Angeles has the look of 1950, with washed out scenery and alternately dim or washed-out lighting. All of the music sounds like it is plucked from 60 years ago, even when people are listening to the radio. The dialog is straight out of the same era.
Rosow is the classic "gumshoe" detective. A hotel desk clerk is named Mabel, a name you don't run into all that much since that era. She utters the line, "Trouble is my middle name". Instead of using a modern day method of spying, Rosow uses a stethoscope pressed up against the wall. A cop, when citing an example of an entertainer, uses Soupy Sales (which, because of his recent death, casts a different and unintended meaning). There are scores of other examples as well.
Do I have to draw you a map, sweetheart? Do you see what's going on yet? I half-expected Robert Mitchum, Orson Welles, Charlton Heston, Humphrey Bogart and Glen Ford to stroll through the film, although Buschel stopped short of that trick. If you want to see Film Noir, avoid "The Missing Person" and rent a classic like "Touch of Evil" and listen to dialog like:
Quinlan: "Come on, read my future for me."
Tanya: "You haven't got any."
Quinlan: "What do you mean?"
Tanya: "Your future is all used up."
