In Japanese films and TV dramas, the kidnapping of a child is an all-too-familiar plot device designed to wring the audience’s tears. But none have come close to the gripping, dry-eyed thriller that Akira Kurosawa created in 1963’s “High and Low.”
Keisuke Yoshida’s ‘Missing’ takes a fresh, less melodramatic approach. Instead of frantic parents and frowning police officers huddled around a telephone waiting for a call, the film, written by Yoshida, begins three months after the kidnapping of a six-year-old girl (Tsugumi Arita) in a seaside resort. When we first meet her working-class parents โ the stoic Yutaka (Munetaka Aoki) and the exhausted Saori (Satomi Ishihara) โ they are handing out flyers in front of a train station as a reporter (Tomoya Nakamura) and cameraman for a local TV station. film them.
