The Missing

New York magazine ran a cover story years ago calling John Ford’s “The Searchers” the most influential movie in American history. Movies like “Taxi Driver,” “Hardcore” and “Paris, Texas” consider the theme of an abducted girl and the father or husband or cab driver who tries to rescue her from sexual despoliation at the hands of people he despises. The beat goes on with Ron Howard’s “The Missing,” a clunky Western that tries so hard to be Politically Correct that although young women are kidnapped by Indians to be sold into prostitution in Mexico, they are never molested by their captors.