The Missing Noir

#5: The Missing Person

This update of the noir genre is a plodding private detective mystery that puts the self-consciously referential Bogartish leading man on the trail of a mystery man and child. Full of elusive characters with obscure motives and lighted largely from behind venetian blinds, writer/director Noah Buschel deploys a series of noir tropes (cigarettes, booze, floozies, voice-over exposition) in a way that both honors the form and answers the question of how those props would play in contemporary America. Turns out it is much more difficult to be a hard-boiled private dick swaddled in smoke in today's L.A. than you might think.

Unfortunately this film is paced so slowly, and with so many feet of film dedicated showing us that the protagonist drinks and smokes, that I forgot to care about the plot at all. The good news is that the film, and everyone in it, seems to be moving through molasses such that it is difficult to miss anything. And while the film tries to hold its audience with the classic neorealist visuals, the grainy footage and washed-out colors are more annoying than expressionist.

Part of the problem may be that Starz elected to screen the film with DVD digital projection rather than on film. What might have been starkly high contrast scenes on film in this format are just harsh. (I don't know why the Starz Center does this--it is my least favorite thing about the place and I think they should tell us before we get there when they aren't going to screen actual film.)

Finally, something about this picture seems stale, like it has been in the can for a very long time. It premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival but Amy Ryan looks pretty young here and the technology seems a bit dated. I have no evidence, it is just a hunch.

The film has a terrific jazzy score and is clearly a labor of love but overall it seems to fall between the cracks of a genuine genre film and an ironically detached homage to the genre. It could be that a genuine noir is impossible today; noir may require a more visually innocent audience in order to shock with its gritty realism. As for ironic detachment, does American film really need any more of it?

John Huston might have been able to do something with this material but in its current form it seems to have lost its way.