Filmfest pick for Thursday and Friday: “The Missing Person”
Michael Shannon, an Oscar nominee for his supporting role in “Revolutionary Road,” graduates to starring status in a wry, stylish flick called ”The Missing Person,” screening Thursday afternoon at 4:45 and Friday night at 9:30 at Plaza Frontenac.
Shannon plays a modern-day private eye in the Bogart mold, with a drinking problem and wisecracks as dry as day-old toast. When he’s hired to retrieve a wealthy New Yorker who went missing after 9/11, the trek to L.A. reopens his own wounds.
(My favorite scene: The gumshoe gets stopped for jaywalking and explains to the rent-a-cop on the Segway that he’s visiting from New York. ”Well, we do things different in Hollywood, pal.” “Is that because of the earthquakes?” “Hey, leave the entertainment to Soupy Sales.”)
Here’s the trailer. And dig the neo-noir cinematography by Webster University graduate Ryan Samul.
Private detective John Rosow is hired to tail a man on a train from Chicago to Los Angeles. Rosow gradually uncovers the man’s identity as a missing person; one of the thousands presumed dead after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Persuaded by a large reward, Rosow is charged with bringing the missing person back to his wife in New York City.