Missing in America

DANNY GLOVER and Linda Hamilton in "Missing in America."
‘Missing in America’ missing a lot
There’s something missing about the film “Missing in America.”
Like a few less clichés, a compelling plot and a story that is believable.
This movie is missing all of this and more.
Danny Glover is the world-weary Vietnam veteran who lives in a rustic cabin in Washington state.
His bathroom is an outhouse. He gets water from a pump. He has no electricity.
So it is with little doubt his Army buddy thinks the Glover character, Jake, is the best person to raise his young part Vietnamese daughter.
David Straithairn plays the dad, who stays on screen long enough to establish he has lung cancer, leave the girl and go off to die offscreen.
The young girl is Lenny, aptly played by Zoe Weizenbaum, later to be seen in “Memoirs of a Geisha.”
This is a by-the-numbers movie for much of its length. Glover is the crusty veteran who loathes the little girl.
The little girl doesn’t want anything to do with the Glover character.
Glover’s Jake visits the local general store, operated by Linda Hamilton of “Terminator” fame. She sees to it he has $20 worth of canned good weekly, well, until costs creep up. Then she gets him $25 worth of canned goods.
Jake and the little girl distribute the goods around the wooded area near his home. We are asked to believe fellow veterans Jake has never met live in caves and in holes and wherever, take the canned goods and leave him chopped wood in return.
Yeah, right.
Bright Lenny, who apparently doesn’t mind outhouses and no electricity or running water, has her conflicts with Jake.
They fight. Jake drinks to forget.
But when perky Lenny decides to go to the lake and the pair barbecue a chicken, she knows she can get these mysterious veterans to come out of the woods by playing a boom box with the song “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” by the Animals.
And it does!
We learn one guy was hiding with his wife by living in a camper on the other side of the lake. No wonder Jake didn’t spot him. Who would ever see a camper parked on a lake every day? And the guy closes his eyes and drinks a beer like he hasn’t had one in decades. Don’t most homeless vets drink?
Ron Perlman, who once teamed with Hamilton in TV’s “Beauty and the Beast,” plays a man-beast veteran who had part of his face blown off by a little girl in Vietnam. Uh-oh. You know there’s going to be problems.
This film starts to sag well into the movie. It’s just plain underwritten.
And you are asked to believe somehow this older veteran fathered this Vietnamese girl four decades after the war ended. Shouldn’t the girl be 40, not 9?
And do veterans live in caves and the trees like wild men?
Inevitably, the Glover character and little Lenny start to like each other. She makes his life complete. The little girl has a father, or maybe a grandfather figure. All is right. Who needs electricity? And you can always shower while it’s raining out, right?
Life is perfect for a scene or two.
Then the tension mounts. Glover is chopping wood. The girl is running through the woods. She is heading toward a taunt string between two trees, ready to launch some weapon. Chop, chop. Run, run. Tragedy!
But with tragedy comes some redemption, as any formulaic film champions.
And soon the credits roll on another movie that will soon be forgotten.
Missing in America
• Directed by Gabrielle Savage Dockterman
• Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, some violence and language
• Runtime: 102 minutes
• Ratings: One and a half stars out of four